Fake It Till You Break It

June 14, 2019

Gr 7 Up-Mia and Jake have known each other their whole lives, going to everything from dentist appointments to Saturday dim sum trips together with their mothers. Now that they're older, their mothers think they would make the perfect couple, but there's one problem: Mia and Jake can't stand each other. After yet another of their mothers' schemes, Mia and Jake concoct a plan of their own to get their mothers to drop the idea for good: they will date, and then they'll stage a dramatic breakup so that their mothers see what a terrible idea it's been from the beginning. At first, it seems to work well, and Mia is excited to finally be able to date someone who isn't Jake without her mother making a fuss. But then things start to feel strange; Mia and Jake wonder if their mothers were right all along. To make matters worse, Mia has started dating someone else even before their fake breakup. Now everything seems hopelessly complicated and neither Mia nor Jake knows how to sort everything out. The book hits predictable plot points and is told in indistinguishable alternating viewpoints. Nevertheless, it is a cute, simple romance that will appeal to fans of Jenny Han and Sandhya Menon. VERDICT While it's refreshing to read a romance with an Asian American lead, this novel reworks old tropes with no new twists.-Zoë McLaughlin, Michigan State University, East Lansing

Copyright 2019 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

April 15, 2019
Grades 7-10 Mia and Jake have been neighbors forever. Their two single moms are super close, and according to them, Mia and Jake are destined to end up together. But as far as Mia and Jake are concerned? Not so much. Meaning, literally anyone else on the planet would be a better option. They've both made their opinions on the subject clear to their respective mothers, but they keep getting shoved together for things. Finally, in a desperate attempt to stop this madness once and for all, Jake and Mia come up with the plan they should have thought of a long time ago: they'll pretend to date and then have a spectacularly terrible breakup so their moms can never bug them again. Everything is going perfectly until?whoops?they're not actually developing feelings for each other, are they? Light, frothy, and packed with plenty of genre tropes, this alternates between Mia and Jake, giving them both character arcs beyond their budding romance. For genre fans who can't resist a hate-to-love romance, this is just the ticket.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)