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

Title: The Only Thing Worse Than Me Is You
Author: Lily Anderson
Format: Ebook
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
Publish Date: May 17, 2016
Source: Publisher

What's the Story?:

From Goodreads.com: "Trixie Watson has two very important goals for senior year: to finally save enough to buy the set of Doctor Who figurines at the local comic books store, and to place third in her class and knock Ben West--and his horrendous new mustache that he spent all summer growing--down to number four.

Trixie will do anything to get her name ranked over Ben's, including give up sleep and comic books--well, maybe not comic books--but definitely sleep. After all, the war of Watson v. West is as vicious as the Doctor v. Daleks and Browncoats v. Alliance combined, and it goes all the way back to the infamous monkey bars incident in the first grade. Over a decade later, it's time to declare a champion once and for all.

The war is Trixie's for the winning, until her best friend starts dating Ben's best friend and the two are unceremoniously dumped together and told to play nice. Finding common ground is odious and tooth-pullingly-painful, but Trixie and Ben's cautious truce slowly transforms into a fandom-based tentative friendship. When Trixie's best friend gets expelled for cheating and Trixie cries foul play, however, they have to choose who to believe and which side they're on--and they might not pick the same side."

My Two Cents:

"The Only Thing Worse Than Me is You" is a sparkling YA book loosely based on Shakespeare's "Much Ado About Nothing." I am always drawn to retellings because they can shed new light on old favorites. I was interested to see how the author would take on this classic and she does it well. This book follows a group of super smart high school students focused on rank at their elite school. Trixie is in a fight to the finish to maintain her rank and is hoping that there is nothing that will sideline her and take her focus.

Trixie is such a great character. I really appreciated that she reveled in her wit and intellect. She is smart and has no qualms about showing it. I really liked how her character grew throughout the book. She starts realizing a lot of herself throughout the story arc. The secondary characters were great as well. 

Probably my favorite part of this book is the dialogue. Anderson has a great ear for sparkling, interesting dialogue and had a great way of making the characters each have their own voice. The banter moves quickly and is full of interesting turns of phrase that kept me reading. The writing of the book was great! Overall, I thought this was a great YA read!