Lauren Morrill playfully employs the Shakespearean question of "to be or not to be?" with a romantic twist in her comedic debut.
Julia Lichtenstein lives a very structured life. She never breaks rules (it's one of her rules), and she even has her future boyfriend picked out. Julia had a pretend wedding with Mark Bixford when they were five, and he has been her MTB ("meant to be") ever since. Julia's destined love for Mark remains present throughout her class trip to London, but she bends her rules when classmate Jason Lippincott takes her out to a wild party, to prove she can let loose. Julia drinks, flirts, lies and even gives her phone number to a cute guy named Chris, who texts her throughout the novel. Adventurous yet inexperienced, Julia accepts Jason's help to teach her how to get a boy to fall in love with her (be it her MTB or Chris) in exchange for doing his homework.
Opposites attract, but Jason is too different from Julia's adored MTB. Jason is not only on her list of things she hates (along with flying, children and models), but he believes true love is a fairy tale and a marketing tool. Their antagonistic relationship makes for an exciting ride, in which Julia slowly learns more about love than she can find inside her books. Readers of Jennifer E. Smith and Stephanie Perkins will revel in this debate about love ruled by the stars or as a matter of the heart. --Adam Silvera, reviewer and former bookseller