Blog Tour: Tweet Cute by Emma Lord 💗Twitter Wars & Romance

Hello fellow bookworms 💗 I was fortunate enough to receive a digital copy of Tweet Cute through Wednesday Books by participating in their blog tour! Thank you so much for reaching out to me, I had a great time reading Tweet Cute 💗 I highly recommend it and will be going in the details later! For now, let’s get into what this book is about 😊

Meet Pepper, swim team captain, chronic overachiever, and all-around perfectionist. Her family may be falling apart, but their massive fast-food chain is booming — mainly thanks to Pepper, who is barely managing to juggle real life while secretly running Big League Burger’s massive Twitter account. 

 Enter Jack, class clown and constant thorn in Pepper’s side. When he isn’t trying to duck out of his obscenely popular twin’s shadow, he’s busy working in his family’s deli. His relationship with the business that holds his future might be love/hate, but when Big League Burger steals his grandma’s iconic grilled cheese recipe, he’ll do whatever it takes to take them down, one tweet at a time. 

All’s fair in love and cheese — that is, until Pepper and Jack’s spat turns into a viral Twitter war. Little do they know, while they’re publicly duking it out with snarky memes and retweet battles, they’re also falling for each other in real life — on an anonymous chat app Jack built. 

As their relationship deepens and their online shenanigans escalate — people on the internet are shipping them?? — their battle gets more and more personal, until even these two rivals can’t ignore they were destined for the most unexpected, awkward, all-the-feels romance that neither of them expected.

Get the Book Here!

Early Praise

“Tweet Cute delivers in every possible way: a perfect enemies-to-lovers romance, a whip-smart plotline, and endearingly real characters. I devoured it.” – Francesca Zappia, author of Eliza and Her Monsters

“Sweet and fun! An adorable debut that updates a classic romantic trope with a buzzy twist.” – Jenn Bennett, author of Alex, Approximately and Serious Moonlight

“A witty rom-com reinvention for the Twitter age, Tweet Cute pairs delicious online rivalry with deeply relatable insights on family pressure and growing up. This fresh, funny read had us hitting ‘favorite’ from page one.” – Emily Wibberley and Austin Siegemund-Broka, authors of Always Never Yours and If I’m Being Honest 

About the Author

Emma Lord is a digital media editor and writer living in New York City, where she spends whatever time she isn’t writing either running or belting show tunes in community theater. She graduated from the University of Virginia with a major in psychology and a minor in how to tilt your computer screen so nobody will notice you updating your fan fiction from the back row. She was raised on glitter, grilled cheese, and a whole lot of love. Her sun sign is Hufflepuff, but she is a Gryffindor rising. TWEET CUTE is her debut novel. You can find her geeking out online at @dilemmalord on Twitter.

 ➡ Instagram ➡ Twitter

My Review

Thank you to Wednesday Books for providing me with a digital Arc in exchange for an honest review! All quotes featured are from the Arc and are subject to changes.

Characters 🌷

➽ Meet Pepper. She’s the daughter of the Big League Burger owners, whose family restaurant gained success and turned into a huge corporate chain. I liked that we got to see the changes that their business success brought to Pepper and her family. She had to move to New York with her mother and attend a prestigious private high school where she felt like an outsider trying desperately to fit in. Throughout the years Pepper has become a perfectionist and a hard-working student who has so many things to juggle at the same time (her school work, extracurriculars and of course the involvement in the corporate Twitter account of her family’s business). The school work and competition is tough at her school and it broke my heart to see her struggle under so much academic pressure. However, I also liked that the book portrays how starved Pepper was for time: she always had so many things to do and felt like she wasn’t allowed to fail. Furthermore, Pepper has worked hard to present a flawless image to the public, sometimes making her appear cold when in reality she’s passionate and snarky. To me, Pepper felt like a very realistic teen and showed how much pressure there is on teenagers to do everything all at once. Of course, it also made me happy to see that she ran a baking blog, as her recipes and baked goods had me craving some cake and chocolate.

➽ Meet Jack. He’s the identical twin of Ethan, the golden child at school who seems to get everything he wants both in school and with their parents. That’s why he often feels overlooked and like no one pays attention to whether or not he wants to inherit the small family diner. I really felt for him, as Jack struggles with being seen and not taken for granted by his twin, in whose shadow he constantly cleans up the messes left behind. He also created the Weazle app and is really into web design, but also feels like he has a responsibility to his family and their diner in which he basically grew up. There is a lot of internal struggles there with Jack, especially as he feels like his twin gets away with everything while he’s left to do the dirty work. I wish we’d seen a better conclusion to his issues with his twin though, as a lot was left unsaid and we never get to truly hear Ethan’s perspective, as his perception of who the ‘golden child’ in the family is, turns out to be very different.

➽ I also liked the secondary characters a lot. Pooja is a student Pepper is competing with since she entered school as both are very good and goes from being a nemesis to a tentative friend. I loved that the book tore down competitiveness between girls (though I’m also glad that their rivalry was entirely focused on schoolwork and did not revolve around trying to date the same guy) and showed that cooperating and helping each other out is so much more important. There’s also Paul – Jack’s dorky best friend – and Paige – Pepper’s sister who’s away for college and had a very rocky relationship with her mother. I do wish we’d seen more of Paul (I feel like we got barely enough information about him, or interaction with Jack to get attached) and Ethan (as we only got to see things from Jack’s perspective). I also wanted more squad dynamics, as we often see Jack and Pepper interacting, but rarely have scenes with multiple characters from school. I’d like to have them all grow closer as a friendship group, similar to the glimpse we get of it at the very end.

➽ Pepper’s mother rubbed me the wrong way though. I know we’re not supposed to excuse her behavior, however, I felt like the narrative could have done better to highlight how invasive her behavior was. Even the moment of truth, in the end, doesn’t really have Pepper’s mom apologizing for her behavior properly or addressing how harmful it is, it was brushed aside too quickly for my taste. To be clear: Pepper was constantly disrespecting her daughter’s boundaries and expecting her to be on call 24/7 to manage their corporate Twitter account despite having a social media team for that. I don’t get why she had an assistant who had no idea how to deal with Twitter. Instead, she pushed her teenage daughter to manage it, sending endless messages even at school. It seemed like Pepper couldn’t escape and she’s not even getting any compensation for it either. Her mother also disregards her concerns about the tone they’re taking on Twitter and basically feels entitled to her time. The scope of her actions wasn’t meant to be excused but I felt like it could have been highlighted better.

Romance 💗

➽ I liked how realistic and slow burn the relationship between Pepper and Jack was. I’m always here for more slow and quiet romantic developments, as insta-love is off-putting to me. I loved that Pepper and Jack went from rivals to friends and only then to lovers. Their bonding took over a large majority of the book and it lays the perfect foundation for additional romantic development that felt natural. The author wove in the attraction of both characters in an organic way that made me feel the underling romantic tension and had me rooting for both of them to become a couple. Even with external stressors and missteps, there was a lot of respect between both of them and all the tension just added to my suspense of them getting together. Of course, there was also the element of them actually chatting on the Weazel app without knowing it that added another great element of suspense.

Plotline 📚

➽ The plotline also has a lot to offer: from Twitter wars to academic pressure to family expectations. Tweet Cute covered a lot of important themes and showed a lot of messy family dynamics, as well as how well-meaning expectations (in the case of Jack) can feel stifling and harmful, especially when there’s sibling jealousy involved. Though the Twitter feud aspect between Jack and Pepper’s family businesses appealed to me, it got a bit repetitive towards the middle of the story where it takes up a large majority of the action. I liked the conflict the Twitter battles provided, but it personally was a bit too much for me. While I found that the epilogue was perfect and satisfying, I thought that the plot began to drag a bit towards the end – I thought the story was close to being over but then it continued on for another while.

“The issue isn’t so much what I want to be, but whether or not I can be it without hurting everyone else in the process.”

Are you going to read Tweet Cute? What is your favorite book featuring social media? 💗