Genre: Young Adult Contemporary
Publisher: Tundra Books ( Penguin Random House Canada )
Publishing Date: May 20, 2025
Synopsis:
Better Than the Movies meets Olivia Rodrigo’s SOUR, a new YA romance from Something More author, Jackie Khalilieh.
Seventeen-year-old Jamie Taher-Foster has big plans for Senior Year. She’s made a list of things and places in Toronto she and her boyfriend of three years, Ben Cameron, need to check off before graduating. And the biggest plan of all: a very special night for the two of them at the upcoming Winter Formal. But then Ben arrives back home after a summer away with an unthinkable announcement: he wants to break up.
And when Jamie discovers him with Olivia Chen the next day, she is determined to get him back. Even if that means fake dating the younger, curly-haired, TikTok dancer, Axel Dahini, whose bicycle she accidentally ran over.
Though she and Axel have nothing in common aside from their shared Arab heritage—she’s a messy, type A with anxiety, he’s carefree but meticulous—their forced time together brings them to better understand one another. And for Jamie, it just might mean learning that not all experiences or people need to be crossed off a list.
Content Warning: anxiety, panic attacks, claustrophobia, alcoholism, absent parent
My Review:
You Started It by Jackie Khalilieh is a YA romance with the fake dating trope. First of all, I love fake dating, it’s one of my favorite tropes. But it was done really badly in this story.
The reason behind the fake dating is important in this kind of story, and here it just didn’t make sense. Jamie starts fake dating Axel the very next day after her boyfriend, Ben broke up with her. Seriously? How does that make sense? Also, it’s clear Ben cheated on her. He didn’t say it, but anyone with eyes can see it. He was nearly kissing another girl the very next day.
Even if I try to accept that part, what happens next is even more messed up. Jamie starts falling for Axel in less than a month. So she forgets her three-year relationship just like that? I couldn’t believe it. This is one of the most messed-up fake dating stories I’ve ever read.
The only character I liked was Axel. In the end, the whole trope was just too messy for me to enjoy. If I just pretend Ben (the ex) didn’t exist and Jamie and Axel fake dated for some other reason, then I would have liked it.
My rating: ⭐⭐ / 5
Thank you TBR and Beyond Tours for providing me with the arc of this book.
Click here for Tour schedule to see more reviews.
Book links:
Goodreads | Amazon | Barnes & Noble | IndieBound
About the author:
JACKIE KHALILIEH is a Palestinian Canadian writer with a penchant for Samoyeds, to-do lists and staying up way too late. She is passionate about positive representation within her writing.
Something More, her debut YA novel, was shortlisted for the Ruth & Sylvia Schwartz Award, as well as the Snow Willow Award, and was selected for several Best of 2023 lists, including the New York Public Library and Audible Books Canada among others.
She resides just outside Toronto, Canada, with her husband and two daughters, continuing to complain nightly about having to cook dinner.
Deepireads 