Book Review: The Only Thing Worse Than Me Is You by Lily Anderson

The Only Thing Worse Than Me Is You by Lily Anderson

What it's about:

          Trixie Watson: genius, fangirl, comic reader. Ben West: genius, fanboy, comic reader.  Watson and West together? The best-known worst enemies of the school, going back to 1st grade when Ben pushed Trixie off the monkey bars and broke her arm.  Given their interests and common friend group, why don't these two get along?!  When disaster strikes and their classmates start getting expelled for mysterious reasons, they have to learn to work together to find out if the expulsions are legit or the product of a supervillian! 

What I thought:

          OMG GUYS. LET ME GET SOMETHING OUT OF MY SYSTEM FIRST: 

Now back to your regularly scheduled review reading:

This book was so freaking adorable. My geeky heart was screaming with happiness and dying of the cute feels. I read it out loud to a friend during a road trip (we're cute, I know) so I had to break it up into two sittings but I definitely could have read this in one go.

Trixie and her friends are my high school spirit animals.  If I had known girls like this when I was a teenager, I'd have been bffs with them.  Nerdy, smart, bookish, quirky--just a great trio of sci-fi watching comic book reading gals.

Then there's Ben.  Snarky, nerdy, poetry-quoting Ben.  His friend group is more varied (though still geeky--I mean, they go to a school for geniuses, after all), but when the powers of the two groups combine, it is truly amazing.

The story is funny and adorable and geeky and mysterious and heartwarming and just a little sad.  You get to watch Ben and Trixie go from arch nemeses to friends to something more (because how could this NOT include a romance?)

The plot is set up so that there are seemingly two different storylines: the Watson v. West snarkfest that transforms into such an adorable romance full of fandom references that my nerd girl brain wanted to explode of pure happiness:

I mean...at one point, after a haircut and a shave, one of Trixie's friends compares Ben to the Tenth Doctor. TEN. DAVID FREAKING TENNANT. 

The other half of the story involves the class ranking list that is the bane of the entire student body and #1 stress inducer to the majority of the characters involved.  People start getting accused of cheating and hacking into the school's grading system and BAM, people start getting expelled left and right. People that are Trixie and Ben's friends, and who Trixie knows would never do anything to hurt their school career.  This is obviously the more serious and less fluffy part of the book, but it tests the tentative relationship between Trixie and Ben and allows them to work together to figure out once and for all what is going on.

Overall, I thought this book was great. It's a YA contemporary chock a block full of ALL OF THE FANDOMS, filled with fluff bolstered by some well-placed and meaningful drama.  As soon as I closed the book I logged onto Amazon to buy myself a copy because I will DEFINITELY be revisiting this story!

Rating: 5 stars.