After an embarrassing loss to her ex-girlfriend in their first basketball game of the season, seventeen-year-old Scottie Zajac gets into a fender bender with the worst possible person: her nemesis, Irene Abraham, head cheerleader for the Fighting Reindeer.
Irene is as mean as she is beautiful, so Scottie makes a point to keep her distance. When the accident sends Irene’s car to the shop for weeks’ worth of repairs and the girls are forced to carpool, their rocky start only gets bumpier.
But when an opportunity arises for Scottie to get back at her toxic ex–and climb her school’s social ladder–she bribes Irene into an elaborate fake- dating scheme that threatens to reveal some very real feelings.
One of my favorite parts of this book is the town they live in.
It’s probably no surprise that I love small, quirky towns. I’ve enjoyed them in previous books. I live in one myself. So when I was introduced to the town of Grandma Earl, which got it’s name from a woman who started a year-round Christmas store, I knew I was going to really enjoy the setting and community in this book.
But this book isn’t only about the town.
Our main character, Scottie, used to date this girl named Tally. They were both on the basketball team at Grandma Earl’s only high school, but Tally had her sights set on being something greater, so she broke Scottie’s heart and transferred to their rival school.
While Scottie drowns in the misery of their breakup, she has to deal with Irene, the head cheerleader at their school. She and Irene don’t exactly get along, but they get along even less when Irene backs her car into Scottie’s.
When Scottie and Irene are forced to carpool to school together after the accident, Scottie realizes something. The days Irene shows up to basketball practice, waiting for Scottie to finish so they can carpool back home, are the same days the basketball team does really good. Soon, Scottie is making a deal with Irene: fake-date her and support the basketball team, and Scottie will pay Irene’s insurance deductible.
I really loved the characters, their development, and their banter in this book. There were a lot of times when I was screaming and, because this is a book club pick, a lot of lines I highlighted. I was definitely having a really good time with this book!
However, I feel like there was a lot of timeskips and moments between scenes I wish were developed more. A lot of sections where a few weeks had passed, but it was difficult to tell time had passed because nothing seemed to have happened in between.
This book also has a lot of focus on the perceptions of others and popularity, which I wasn’t the biggest fan of, but this book did it in such a way that I didn’t hate it. I was pleasantly surprised by the villain of this book and how much I could pity them, which I think is a sign of a really well fleshed out villain.
Overall, I really enjoyed this book, and I definitely recommend picking it up if you haven’t already!
KiiitasticBooks 