In their nearly flawless first co-written YA novel, Olivia A. Cole (Ariel Crashes a Train) and Ashley Woodfolk (The Beauty That Remains) reveal that revenge isn't always a dish best served cold; in their talented hands, it's actually heartwarming.
Beautiful, biracial Maia Moon is newly single. Well, sort of. She has broken up with Tatum Westbrook three times in the last six months. In that time, she's been kissing badass white lesbian Beau Carl and flirting with Charm Montgomery, her Black trigonometry tutor. But when Maia accepts Tatum's elaborate promposal, Beau and Charm realized Maia's been playing them both. The teens form a plan to "make her feel what [they] feel." Charm, who has only kissed one girl, will take "Lesbian Lessons" from Beau to ensure that Maia will say yes when Charm asks Maia to prom--where Charm will dump her. Readers will likely know what's coming: as Beau teaches Charm the skills she'll need to win Maia's heart, they realize that seeing their plan through will be a lot harder than expected.
Call Your Boyfriend is a smart, buoyant YA romance. Cole and Woodfolk clearly respect rom-com formulas and tropes, and expertly demonstrate how to deploy them with skill, using formulas (the revenge plot, the unlikely allies) as narrative scaffolding to firmly ground a novel that becomes satisfying, even reassuring, in its predictability. Call Your Boyfriend easily fits on a shelf--alongside Becky Albertalli's Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda, Jenny Han's To All the Boys I've Loved Before, and Alice Oseman's Heartstopper series--of the 21st century's most beloved contemporary rom-coms for teen readers. --Stephanie Appell, freelance reviewer