Tweet Cute by Emma Lord Book Review
“By seven o’clock on Friday night, I am drafting a blog post for the next Pepper/Paige creation in my head: Pepper’s C***** C*** Day Crinkle Cookies.
Ingredients: First, add unresolved tension with one Jack Campbell, who is either out sick or participating in the Senior Skip Day shenanigans taking place during the school day. Mix in nearly twenty-four hours without contact from Wolf, two seconds after essentially baring my soul to him by showing him the thing I am most proud of in this world. Add what is proving to be the most awkward hangout with Landon and a large group of incredibly drunk teenagers on the face of the earth. Add chocolate chips, butter, flour, salt, cocoa powder, eggs, anymore embarrassment than the body of a teenage girl can possibly contain, set the oven to a bajillion degrees, and set the whole thing on fire.”
(pg. 258)
About
Author: Emma Lord
Genre: Young Adult Contemporary
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Synopsis
Meet Pepper, swim team captain, chronic overachiever, and all-around perfectionist. Her family may be falling apart, but their massive fast-food chain is booming ― mainly thanks to Pepper, who is barely managing to juggle real life while secretly running Big League Burger’s massive Twitter account.
Enter Jack, class clown and constant thorn in Pepper’s side. When he isn’t trying to duck out of his obscenely popular twin’s shadow, he’s busy working in his family’s deli. His relationship with the business that holds his future might be love/hate, but when Big League Burger steals his grandma’s iconic grilled cheese recipe, he’ll do whatever it takes to take them down, one tweet at a time.
All’s fair in love and cheese ― that is, until Pepper and Jack’s spat turns into a viral Twitter war. Little do they know, while they’re publicly duking it out with snarky memes and retweet battles, they’re also falling for each other in real life ― on an anonymous chat app Jack built.
As their relationship deepens and their online shenanigans escalate ― people on the internet are shipping them?? ― their battle gets more and more personal, until even these two rivals can’t ignore they were destined for the most unexpected, awkward, all-the-feels romance that neither of them expected.
Review
Spoilers Contained Below
To all the Twitter Fanatics,
So. . .
This is about to get reeeeeeeeaaaaaalllllllll awkward like Aka-awkward, if you know what I mean,
because your girl don’t have a Twitter 🙈.
YIKES!
I feel like everyone has a Twitter and I’m the 0.0000000000000000099% of the population that doesn’t have a Twitter and it’s not because I don’t want a Twitter or that I’ve never thought about having a Twitter. I think Twitter is such a fun outlet from what I’ve seen on Instagram posts or Facebook about Tweets from the Gifs, the Memes, the Twitter humor, the poetry, and all of those good, fun things. I just feel like I’m the type of person who knows that if she had another social media such as Twitter, then that would be too all-consuming for me already. And I don’t want social media to run my life and I know I have power over how long I spend on social media and things like that, but adding another platform into the mix might be a bit overwhelming for me, so I don’t have a Twitter. I love the Twitter humor and posts I have seen, so if you post those kinds of things on Instagram and Facebook, I greatly appreciate it because it makes me feel like I’m in the loop.
But this isn’t about my lack of a Twitter life, this is about the book!
I was highly intrigued by the concept because I don’t have a Twitter and it’s interesting that we live in a time where we would have a legit book about a Twitter war 😂. I may not have a Twitter, but gosh knows I’ve heard about the infamous Twitter wars from Wendys, to McDonald’s, to Burger King, and to the time IHop wanted to change to IHob. I don’t know what they were doing, International House of Burgers?! I mean, how do we go from pancakes to burgers?! And I thought it was over dramatic the way they flipped the P to a B.
I’m rambling, but this book had it’s own all out Twitter war: between Big League Burger and Girl Cheesing. So basically, your average fast food place versus a local spot and it was something else.
Since I don’t have a Twitter, I couldn’t really relate to the humor or the ideas of some of the tweets that either Jack or Pepper posted. Maybe it’s because my humor sucks, but some of their tweets weren’t super funny to me. Maybe I didn’t get it. But other tweets were comical like how Big League Burger had the whole cat with the glasses dropping down on the face because I think we’ve all seen that Gif. I can’t distinctly remember the other tweets, but gosh, I never knew how much work went into a tweet. It’s kind of like creating a caption, but a tweet is only so many words and it has to be impactful and pack a punch. So I think tweets are more high stakes in that way because you can put a whole paragraph of a caption on Instagram or other social media platforms, but Twitter, it’s all about the sentiment of the least saying the most. I love that.
I admire Pepper’s work ethic. She’s a strong, hard-working person who pours her passion into everything she does and you can see that with her baking, her school work, and the swim team.
I really liked the idea of her stress baking because there’s something very Lara Jean-esque about it. I also love baking in my free time too so I can understand the sentiment of her enjoying baking. Pepper’s a much more skilled baker than I’ll ever be, that’s for sure. Well, if you call throwing a bunch of candy bars and a mishmash of different ingredients to make something 😄. That’s the fun of baking though, to experiment with different ingredients to see what will taste the best and what won’t. Her names for her foods were also very iconic and funny. I’m So Sorry Blondies, and Monster Cake. You won’t be forgetting the names of her creations anytime soon. I also related to her in the way she had a blog. I have a blog, she has a blog, we all have a blog. And it’s on blogs where we post a part of ourselves that maybe we’re too scared to tell people in real life, but we want an outlet to connect with others who might understand that similar love/passion. I liked that she shared her blog with her sister, Paige. It’s a cute sentiment that Paige would do a blog post and then Pepper would do one. It was kind of like they were keeping up to date with each other with each other’s blog posts. I would actually love to see a baking blog because the food pictures would be AMAZING!
Pepper was also very driven with her school work. Like most teens, she seems to have high hopes of getting into a good college to make her mom proud, but at the same time I could feel this part of Pepper that wasn’t working hard for her, more so the idea of what others wanted/expected of her. Her mom never really told her she had to go to college or a good school and Pepper assumed she had to because her sister went to a good school. Pepper also put pressure on herself to be the best because of this rivalry she had with Pooja, which I’ll dive into a bit later. But when Pepper mentioned that she didn’t want to go to college and wanted to start her own bakery, I knew that that was what she wanted to do. In my heart.
Because whenever she talked about school, it had no passion in it—-just going through the motions. And like her blog, I felt like she was scared to say her dreams of opening her own bakery one day because she felt like it wouldn’t be good enough or that she would let her parents down. I also felt like she would have felt like she wasted all this time focusing on being the best in school if she only ended up opening a bakery.
A big part of Pepper’s arc is her self-actualization after kind of losing herself when she moved from Nashville. When she moved from Nashville, her whole life completely flipped upside down: Her parents divorced, her sister was there and then went to college, the Big League Burger took off, and her mom was barely around. Pepper had to navigate a new school with people who had been there their whole lives. She felt like she had to fit in at the new school or that she would be seen as “different,” and it really saddened me the way she would stay up with her mom to learn the norms of the school or how she went on this whole transformation shopping spree to dress like everyone else. All I wanted to do was tell Pepper that she didn’t need to change one thing about herself because when doing so, she lost who she was and her happiness. She started focusing on school more, and there’s nothing wrong with that, but she lost everything unique about her to be like everyone else. And it kind of sucks when you think about how a place can make you feel the need to change the essence of who you are, so you feel like you belong.
Things were also tense in her family between her mom and sister. I know what it’s like to have a tense relationship with your mom, so I would peg myself as Paige in this situation. But I felt completely bad for Pepper because she was the middle man who tried to keep the peace between them or communicate things between them. I thought it was sad that Pepper was the mature one who wanted to mend that relationship and how the mom didn’t. I don’t know their whole life story, but I think they should have tried harder with Paige to fix things if she truly cared about her. I don’t know, there was something so easy about the mom just avoiding Paige and letting her be. Yes, give Paige time to come to her own understanding, but still be there to reach out and care—–not have your other daughter be the mediator. I also felt bad for Pepper in how she was also the mediator between her mom and dad. I liked that her mom and dad still cared about each other because sometimes divorces can create a lot of resentment and anger, but it’s nice that there weren’t any hard feelings. I thought it was kind of weird though how the whole food idea was theirs, but how the mom wanted to leave to expand it. I guess that was the difference between the dad and the mom, they both had different dreams. They were mature enough though to not hold each other back and to still be strong enough as independent people to know what they want. But I also know that being a kid of divorced parents can be challenging mentally, physically, and emotionally. So I think that’s also where some of Paige’s feelings come from.
Maybe because her parents were divorced, she felt the need to be perfect because maybe part of her felt like it was her fault that she wasn’t good enough. Or maybe she felt like she needed to be perfect to do both of them proud. But again, that’s a lot of pressure on her.
And the mom wasn’t helping anything. Her mom was very distant—–permissive if you will—–and I didn’t really like her. She didn’t seem to care about Pepper unless it had to do with the business. I get that the BLB is important, but she should have focused on her daughter and asked what she wanted because in none of those situations did the mom ever give Pepper a choice. More like she told Pepper to do something and Pepper would feel obligated to do it to keep this peace. Pepper had a full plate as it was and for her to add drafting and texting Taffy the Twitter Poster for the BLB was difficult. It had to be overwhelming for her. When her grades dropped, it wasn’t because Pepper was spending so much time with Jack, but because she literally had to work on the swim team, had to do her homework, her college essays practice for her interviews, blog and bake, and lead a Twitter war at the same time.
She was battling it all!
On the flip side, we have Jack. Cool, funny, outgoing, loud, tech-savvy Jack. I gotta admire his parents’ puns for Girl Cheesing. We love a pun! 😄
Jack really underestimates himself. That’s because he’s a twin. But the dude could create apps, which not just anyone can do. He created an app about finding Mac n’ Cheese places closest to you and he created the infamous Weasel app. If you read A Match Made In Mehendi it really gave me those kinds of vibes with the app. Kind of makes me wonder, is there a popularity with dating apps and animal avatars among teens these days? Because if there is, I’m soooo behind the times. But the app wasn’t only just useful for dating, but for creating study groups and building friendships, which I loved.
There’s this whole anonymity to the app, which is also a fun factor. After a certain while, the app would do a “pop goes the weasel”—-hence the name—-and reveal the real identity of the two people chatting. That’s a fun factor to the app, but the name probably isn’t the most hard-selling.
Because Jack owns the app, he can control what goes on. But he doesn’t look at the identities of everyone because that seems unfair to him. Jack, naturally, is on his own app as the Wolf, which makes no sense to me. He should have been the dolphin 🤪. Get it because he can dive and swim and he’s very energetic.
Anyway, not the point. But he’s talking to this girl named Bluebird (Pepper). They don’t know that and Jack coded it so that they wouldn’t find out because he can at least have control over that too.
The only thing is Pepper and Jack despise each other in real life. The whole hate relationship they had going on in the beginning of the book reminded me a lot like elementary school teasing because, obviously if a boy is making fun of you, HE LIKES YOU! If Jack wasn’t the other protagonist destined to fall in love with Pepper, I would have thought some part of him liked Pepper because you don’t just call a girl Pepperoni and make fun of her unless you’re five-years-old and have a major crush. There was this whole section in the beginning of the book where Jack was giving this spiel about how he gave Pepper a hard time because she changed to fit in when she was so different when she came. He didn’t like the new Pepper and I feel like teasing her was his way to hash out this underlying anger that she changed. I think Jack really wanted Pepper to be the one that was different from the rest and it disappointed him that she wasn’t. I understand that, but you don’t have to give the girl a hard time when she just moved and is trying to figure things out!
I also kind of didn’t understand how when the whole Twitter war started how none of them knew that it was each other. How did no one know that Pepper was the daughter of someone who owned one of the bigger fast food franchises in the country? And wouldn’t people know that Jack was a part of Girl Cheesing? Is this school that separated that no one knows about anything?! Heck, I knew soooo much about everyone in my class, you can ask me their name and I can write their autobiography. I just found it strange how it wasn’t common knowledge to them.
Like most Twitter wars, it started because of something petty. BLB stole the Girl Cheesing’s Grandma’s special recipe and Jack and his twin Ethan were red hot furious. I get that. If someone stole your mom’s recipe, fine, but your GRANDMA? Dishonor on your cow, dishonor on your family. DISHONOR to us ALL! 😂
BLB got roasted for stealing Girl Cheesting and Girl Cheesing gained all these new followers from a retweet. It was good publicity for Girl Cheesing if I’m being honest because more people went there to try the Grandma’s special sandwich to compare it with BLB. More people were also supporting the small business, which I love! I mean, it’s very humanizing that people would rally for the little guy (Girl Cheesing) rather than the big guy (BLB). Once they found out they were running the Twitter war, I liked how they kept it going and turned it into a competition between them. Jack really overstepped in my opinion by deliberately sneaking into the girl’s locker room to change the BLB password and lock everyone out of that account. But Pepper really should have changed her password. 1234? I mean, she was asking for it! 😆 Pepper got back at him, of course, by changing the Girl Cheesing bio by hacking their account too. It was cute how Jack did that though because he felt intimidated by Pepper and how good she was at this whole Twitter thing. Twitter humor is real. I thought it was funny when after one time they had practice, that Pepper was casually leaning against a wall with a BLB milkshake gloating and taunting Jack with her Twitter power.
I couldn’t believe the extent that people were actually interested in such a thing as a Twitter war between two companies. Are people really that invested in these types of things? Not judging you if you are, but wow, I barely have time for social media as it is. But what made it kind of extreme, but also cool was how there was a Youtube channel that covered it. Their Youtube had a pretty iconic title and I would love to see that actually be a Youtube Channel because it would make good money 😂 The slogan too! Iconic 👌🏼. Emma Lord really thought it through.
I felt like their Twitter war was also a way to keep their rivalry going in real life and online, which meant they also were starting to spend a lot of time together.
Ethan was the dive team captain and Pepper was the swim twin captain and together they were supposed to meet to raise money and be in charge of things. But Ethan didn’t take his position seriously, so like with everything, Jack stepped up and took on the role of captain to no credit. That meant he also met with Pepper a lot more. I would have thought their initial coffee date was going to be awkward given how much Jack gave off the vibe that he wanted to dislike Pepper. But, again, I think he only disliked Pepper because of how he was disappointed that she changed who she was to fit in. When he started to hang out with her and really got to know her, he started to see the Pepper he liked all those years ago—–the girl he first liked. I also liked how they started to open up to each other about different things in their lives because they knew that they both were going through things that were similar.
One of the moments I really liked between them was when Jack rode the bus with her to her college interview. It was sweet because Pepper was freaking out about how much of an idiot she was to not realize the interview was at the actual school and how she had never been outside of the place in New York she lived. Jack couldn’t believe that she hadn’t rode a bus outside of town before, but given how Pepper didn’t have a lot of time to explore or didn’t have the desire to always do so, it wasn’t surprising. Jack didn’t have to go with her, but I liked that he did. No one just goes with their “supposed” enemy across town on a bus because he/she hates that person. No siree. Jack was also kind in trying to get her to ramble because she was nervous. He really knows how to turn on and off the charm when he needs to.
But my favorite moment was when they were at the pool where Pepper had to dive.
Part of their last act of war was a post of each of their companies photos and people would have to vote on which photo they liked best. No one would know which photo belonged to which company and it was this whole bet that if BLB won, Girl Cheesing would surrender and Jack had to do something. And if Girl Cheesing won, BLB would surrender and apologize and Pepper had to do the high dive.
Obviously, Pepper lost, but I’ll get more into that later.
But that moment between Jack and Pepper was so intimate and supportive. It was perfect. Pepper was quaking in her feet to jump and I would be too. I don’t do heights. But what made it cute was how Jack was telling her she didn’t actually need to do it. But I think that only hardened Pepper’s resolve to prove to him and herself that she could. Jack probably knew that too because Peppers is a very strong-headed girl, but I liked that he also gave supporting encouragement to her. It was so different from his joking demeanor and when he was saying these kind words to Pepper, I could feel just how much he liked and cared about her. Because he just wanted to push her to be the best she could be—-to try something different. But he also cared enough to not push too far or to be there when she fell. He’s a good person, that Jack.
What I loved so much about this moment, though, was how Pepper was standing on the tip-top of that diving board, looking down. All her fears were floating around in her head from the Twitter war, her family drama, her future, and standing on that board made her feel like those problems were insurmountable. She saw diving as finally letting go—–expectations, her issues, and her worries. When she took that leap off the diving board, I was holding my breath for her. But I was also smiling like a maniac because I loved the way Emma Lord slowed down the moment so it was just the reader and Pepper to finally see this part of Pepper that was weightless as she was now free. The water being there to catch her felt like a symbol for how unsteady her life was and how she always had to support herself first, but now she knew that there was always going to be someone or something there to catch her if she fell. I also felt like her falling was her allowing herself to be like, “It’s okay if I fail or make mistakes because there’s always something to fall back on.” And maybe for her, she felt like her whole life was planned out from this great career and college, that she felt like if she ever failed or messed up, it would all be ruined. Looking at it now, there could have been this extra pressure Pepper felt because her sister had a complicated relationship with her mom that she felt the need to be even more so what her mom wanted/expected of her.
For a moment, I could feel Jack’s worry and shock that Pepper actually took the leap, but when Pepper came above water with an exuberant smile, all his worries were replaced by a mirrored smile. I loved loved loved how she went again and again to dive. If Jack hadn’t given her the courage or idea to dive, I don’t think she would have ever felt that light feeling she felt. And after that moment you can really feel that shift in Pepper in finally living for herself.
But hold up!!!!
We have to talk about the other reason why this part was my favorite 😏.
THE ALMOST KISSS!!!!
It wouldn’t be a romcom book if there wasn’t some romantic tension in the pool!!! Where’s the lifeguard because darn my heart was racing! They were so cute in how Jack chased her around the pool and they were dunking each other’s head. It’s such a stark contrast from the beginning of the book when they were fighting over the pool lanes.
Idiot LANDON had to ruin the moment!!! There’s always that one person who ruins the moment 🤪! Freaking Karen.
OOOOOH, but what set me off about Landon was how he literally screamed across the pool, asking Pepper for her number like she wasn’t just having an intimate moment with JACK?! I mean, could he not see the steam coming from the pool? Dude, needs better social cues because he doesn’t have a clue!
Which brings me to how our dear Pepper thought Landon was the Wolf.
He is not. If anything, he’s like the leech 😂 HE SUCKS!
Not that I didn’t like him, heck, he was not really a main event in the book, but gosh darn when he was, he just gave off all kinds of wrong vibes for me. First of all, I could understand why Pepper would think Landon was the Wolf because Landon would talk about apps and he was in this tech program. Second, Landon would and wouldn’t text at the right times. Third, when Wolf sent Bluebird (Pepper) the link to the Mac N’ Cheese app (which by the way, a pretty inventive idea. Anyone listening or likes app creation, you should create an app that lets you find certain food options near you. But I guess that’s like Google 🤔. So maybe not. This is why I don’t make apps), that the next day Landon was spotted eating mac n’ cheese. Like that dude from the Incredibles would say, coincidence, I think not!
So I understood why Pepper would be so off trail with who Wolf was.
But I expected more from Jack, not only because he owned the app, but couldn’t he have picked up some clues or something? I also think that Jack wasn’t too keen as to look who Bluebird was, more so he wanted to just know who she was. It’s kind of a great example of the idea that girls over-process and think things while guys go with the flow 😂.
I give Jack credit, though, because he figured out who it was once Bluebird sent him the link to her blog. Jack knew it was her because it had all of Pepper’s creations from Monster Cake to her brownies. I would have slapped Jack on the head if he didn’t put two-and-two together after that. I thought that he should have gone about telling her much better because his plan of taking a picture of her and then sending it to her on Senior ditch day was kind of D-U-M-B. I also wanted to shake him silly because he thought that Pepper thought Wolf was Landon and that made him scared as to how Pepper would react if she found out it was actually him. I could tell even at this point that there was a part of Pepper that didn’t want it to be Landon anymore. Sure, Pepper used to like him that way, but again, Landon the leech wasn’t sticking well for her anymore. Not when she had Jack, the “wolf.”
Can’t say Landon wasn’t chivalrous because he bought her a classic hot dog. What a human bean 😆! Nothing says romantic like a hot dog 🌭. But there’s nothing more romantic than it being the hot dog that gave Pepper food poisoning and made her royally vomit. Can’t believe that Landon had the audacity to actually laugh and go along with his friends filming the whole thing. I mean, if someone sees someone vomiting, do you really film it? I would have turned away because that kind of thing is gross to me, but I would have also helped her.
Thank gosh, we had a class act like Pooja to hold her hair back.
Now let’s talk about Pooja. I’m envisioning someone like Naomi Scott, but with much more short, wavy hair. Towards the beginning of the book, I didn’t take a liking to Pooja because through Pepper’s eyes you see her as a competition. It’s interesting that the way a character sees a person influences the way you also see that character. But the more we got to know Pooja, the more misunderstood I saw the situation because Pooja genuinely seemed like a great person.
She struck me as someone who was as academic as Pepper, but that she had to try and work hard for it. I admire that sentiment because as someone who isn’t the most academically intelligent, I know how hard it can be to work to be the best you can be. I also liked how Pooja was the person who initiated the study groups because it takes an honest worker to know that one needs help and to get that help. Having a study group also was beneficial to other people in the group. It was cute when Pooja and her first started to talk and how they bonded over the Twitter war and how Pooja’s brother helped Pepper hack into Girl Cheesing’s account. From there, their friendship grew steadily and I was here for it. It’s so refreshing to see girl’s work together rather than against each other. Because we aren’t each other’s competition, when we should be each other’s supporters. Pooja was there for Pepper when she had the bake sale and was mad at Jack for not talking to her after the whole pool or the couch kiss thing.
“My throat was tight. All this time I had painted us both in these certain lights—–me an underdog, and her some kind of bully—–and using it to fuel this fire in me. Not just to justify my need to be the best, but to justify everything else—–the chip on my shoulder. The way I didn’t make many friends here. In one stupid moment that I completely misread, I decided it was me against the world.
(pg/ 264)
This was the most pivotal moment in their friendship because it shifted Pepper’s thinking. Pepper resented Pooja for YYYYYYYEEEEAAAAARRRSSS because she thought Pooja was working against her during that competition. So she saw Pooja as a threat. But in the moment Pooja made an honest mistake in her answer and was in no way shape or form trying to steer Pepper wrong.
It goes to show you that people perceive events differently and that communication is key. If Pepper were to have talked to Pooja or Pooja to Pepper all those years ago, they would have saved themselves the anger, resentment, or hurt they felt for years. They could have been good friends. But they never crossed that line because I think as girls when we see someone doing us wrong, we instantly think that’s all there is to it, and maybe it is, but we should try to see it from that person’s perspective too. It would have been mature of Pooja to talk to Pepper and say, “Sorry, I didn’t know that answer was wrong.” Or something.
Sometimes it’s miscommunication and misinterpreting a situation or words that can be misleading.
As Pepper’s relationship was progressing with Jack and Pooja, there was one other person in Pepper’s life that I felt didn’t see eye-to-eye with her: her mother. Her mother was barely around, so it’s not like she could even look her daughter in the eye to begin with. But I also didn’t like the pressure she put on Pepper to make all those tweets because, honey, your daughter has a life and you hired people to tweet, so don’t put your daughter on the end of it. I also didn’t think that it was fair for the mom to be upset with Pepper when her grades slipped. The mom put more responsibility on Pepper’s shoulder, what did she think was going to happen?
UGHHH, but the fact that she blamed Jack for it, made me want to throw a patty at her forehead!!!
She was trying to Romeo and Juliet them and I wasn’t having it!
Of course, the star-crossed lovers didn’t listen to their parents. I thought it was cute when Pepper finally took Jack up on his offer to bake in his kitchen because the mom put a no baking in the house ban on Pepper, which I mean, RUDE. Her loss. Jack’s mom is a real one and I love her humor and personality. She reminded me of Theresa Russo from Wizards of Waverly Place. I also thought how funny it must have been for Pepper to be crossing the literal line into “enemy” territory because she had never been there or eaten there.
The baking was cute and it was kind of funny how a bunch of kids outside the restaurant saw Jack and Pepper and wanted pictures with them. I also couldn’t believe that people would create fan art, let alone ship the two of them once they found out who was running the BLB and Girl Cheesing Twitter war. People really are invested. It’s bonkers.
You know who was better than Jack’s mom?
The Grandma.
Yup, the one with the special grilled cheese recipe.
“And as for you—-I’m old, not dead. I’ve been following this saga from the beginning. Have you and that Patricia girl made out yet or what?”
I somehow manage to choke on oxygen. I lean over to my dad mid-cough, expecting him to say something to stop her, but he’s gone redder than I am and already left to his feet . . .
“That girl is a hoot and a half. You two got me through an entire two months of waiting for new episodes of my favorite soaps,” says Grandma Belly, with a wink. “You tell her she’s welcome to let that sassy mom of hers copy my recipes any day of the week.”
(pg. 336)
I would love to be her 😂!
And you can’t say Grandma didn’t know what was up.
There was also this moment where Pepper had a falling out with her mom because of how she caught Pepper with Jack at his house. On the couch. Where they kissed. KISSED. She’s the other person to ruin moments. Her and Landon can have a side job together—–ruining romance.
Then came the whole idea that Jack’s dad and Pepper’s mom knew each other.
Which BOGGLED my mind. This was truly a Romeo and Juliet thing. For a second, my mind was like, OOOOOHHH did they date? Are they having an affair? If it was the affair, I was going to be even more boggled because Jack’s mom was so sweet.
But apparently, Jack’s dad has been stealing Pepper’s mom’s recipes for ages. They did date back then, but then Jack’s dad all-of-a-sudden fell in love with Jack’s mom and that left Pepper’s mom maybe kind of angry at how quick it happened. And when Jack’s dad moved to New York he opened up a small business just like Pepper’s mom had always wanted to do and he took her Kitchen Sink cookies with him and some of her recipes. When I read that, I was thinking Jack’s dad is a darn stealer and a hypocrite. How could he be mad at Pepper’s mom when he bit from her first. I could understand why Jack and Ethan were angry because they didn’t know the history of how Girl Cheesing came to be, but the dad should have corrected them as to not start a full-blown out Twitter war over this. It wasn’t fair that Pepper’s mom got all the hate when he stole everything from her first. Pepper’s mom having the Grandma’s special burger recipe for BLB was her way to get back at Jack’s dad. Knowing that, I feel like the dad shouldn’t have poked back.
Necessarily, Jack and Ethan did. But still. It’s kind of a small world when you think about how closely tied these two places were. I also feel like the mom opening BLB was her last resort rather than her dream. Because yeah, she wanted to open a restaurant, but the mom wanted something small scale and intimate such as Girl Cheesing. But when Jack’s dad stole everything she wanted to build, that left her little option or creativity as to what her plan B was. And sucked. So I could understand the mom’s anger at Jack and his family. I could also understand why the mom wasn’t fully happy. To have your whole dream stolen from you and made into someone else’s? It’s not grate (We had to throw a pun in here sometime!) 😅
When the mom opened up to Pepper about it, I saw the mom’s walls break down and I appreciated that. Because she was hurt, but her having this big business was her power from what was taken from her. I think the mom might also want to go back to a small business one day—-to do what she truly loved. I also think it would be better for her, so she can focus on her daughters.
Bringing Paige into the mix, Pepper and Paige have an interesting relationship that I would have liked to understand more. Because I feel like we only got glimpses of this idea of Paige and why she disliked the mother so much and how that caused tension with Pepper. I understand where Paige was coming from based on experience, but the fight between Pepper felt unresolved still. Pepper was really taking her anger and hurt out on Paige. And then Pepper finally asked her why she ever came with the mom and her to New York when she didn’t like the mom. Paige told her how she went for Pepper because she knew Pepper wasn’t going to survive—–everything Paige had done was for Pepper’s happiness. And in that moment Pepper looked back and realized how unhappy Paige was when they first moved and how confused she was at the situation. Sometimes when we go through things, we don’t put ourselves outside of the situation to see that someone else is going through it too. I think Pepper never put herself outside of it until Paige told her that.
But what made it feel unresolved, despite the ending and how Paige was said to have visited more on the weekends, was the fact that Pepper didn’t really talk to Paige until her and the mom sat down to talk. I felt like it wasn’t really Paige’s fault and Pepper should have reached out sooner to talk about what they left open in that conversation. Because, yea, it was alluded to that the mom and her drove to Paige’s college with I’m So Sorry Blondies, and yea, that might have patched things up, but I would have liked to see that. I don’t know, I love when family’s talk things through because we don’t get to see that a lot in books. So it would have been nice, but I understand because the book wasn’t about the family drama per say.
But it sure did have a whole lot of family drama if you ask me 😆.
In the best way of course! I liked that this book actually included the family so much because most books gloss over the family.
For Jack, the drama was with his twin: Ethan. The Golden twin who was in student government, the captain of the dive team, and the good child. Everyone loved Ethan because he was attractive and had it all figured out. He was the one everyone placed their high hopes and dreams into. And I could FEEL the anger, resentment, and jealousy that came off of Jack.
I don’t know what it’s like being a twin, but I can understand how that constant comparison is more prominent because you have a spitting image of you to actually compare yourself to. I also felt terrible for Jack because he did everything and never got the credit he deserved. Ethan overextended himself, saying he would do this or that, and yet it was Jack who always followed through for Ethan because he was too busy sucking face! If Ethan was on Weasel, I bet he would be a Sucker Fish 😂. My gosh, I swear the only times we saw him in this book was either a) he was sucking face b) kissing butt or c) throwing temper tantrums.
I wanted to give Jack a hug whenever he fell into that hole of comparison. Jack was the one who brought the cookies to the bake sale, he was the one who went to Girl Cheesing and took responsibility without being asked, and he was the one who saved the dive team when, you guessed it, Ethan was SUCKING face. Landon and Ethan would be good friends too! 🤪
But Ethan was immature in the way he would get angry with Jack. I didn’t like how he posted that rude tweet without Jack being aware. It was one of the second tweets and it was one of the more offensive ones. It goes to show how Ethan just wanted to get back to hurt, but Jack was more deliberate and humorous in his responses. But what I couldn’t stand was how he changed the Girl Cheesing contest photo of the Grandma Special sandwich to him holding up the sandwich.
WHAT AN EGO MANIAC!
He only did that so he could get publicity for himself so girls (and for his preference, guys) would go to the shop. Of course if young, hormonal teens see an attractive guy eating a sandwich, they want a bite of that. It’s kind of like when Alex from Target became popular because some person wanted to take a picture of an attractive guy at Target. Gosh, I hope that Alex from Target’s doing okay.
Oh, but the twitter responses to that picture—–good job Emma Lord. She knows her Twitter 👏🏼! He also did it in jealousy of Jack. Jack’s parents entrusted him as the leader of the Twitter account and I was happy for Jack because he had low self-esteem, but when given that responsibility from his parents was kind of like a high honor when his parents always put Ethan on a pedestal. It was Jack’s moment to shine and I loved that.
Ethan did not. Because that meant not being in the spotlight. The Twitter posts and things Ethan did, felt like attention seeking acts, and it created this whole contention between them.
Paige and Pepper’s relationship had more resolution than Ethan and Jack, but I appreciated the moment when Jack talked to his Grandma about how he felt like he wasn’t the golden child compared to Ethan. The Grandma talked to him about Ethan going to her and said the same thing about Jack. Kind of like with Pepper and Pooja, they never really knew the other perspective. And it’s ironic how they both felt each other was better, which I feel is a natural sentiment because one can see another person’s achievements and think that that person is doing better. Like for Ethan, he saw Jack as the golden child because the parents trusted him more with the business, but Jack viewed Ethan as the golden child because he got away with things easily.
They never really had a conversation to tell each other how they really felt, and it would have been nice to include that because that’s the only relationship that I don’t think got a proper ending. But it’s nice to know that through their Grandma they can both know that they think highly of each other. And maybe that can lead to an honest conversation one day. They’re both good twins to each other, but similar to Pooja and Pepper, again, they had that competition/who’s better mindset rather than supportive.
Jack also had this weight on his shoulder: The Girl Cheesing Restaurant. Yup, sitting right there for him to bear. And I could tell it was a burden and a point of contention for Jack. He loved Girl Cheesing because he grew up there and he knew the people. But he also didn’t like it because it felt like jail. He felt like he would be stuck there for the rest of his life because that’s what his parents wanted him to do. If he didn’t take on the business, he would feel like he let them down.
It was difficult because the parents kind of pushed Jack into thinking the business was going to be his because they gave him more power in the store, while Ethan could do whatever he wanted. It sent that message that Ethan was going to be the child who left and did something amazing and that Jack was the one who was just going to stay there, so might as well teach him how to run it. I don’t think the parents consciously knew they were doing that, but it hurt to read how heavy Jack felt all the time when he thought about Girl Cheesing and his future.
When Jack blew up at his family about how he finally felt, I could feel that weight being lifted. Sometimes if an issue is stuck in someone’s conscious and never spoken, it settles there, it accumulates, and it grows. But have that idea heard, it really does relieve all that pent up emotion that was clouded by the thoughts.
The dad’s heart to heart with Jack was everything. It was needed.
“I don’t want you to think I pushed you into it because I thought any less of you . . . if anything, it’s the opposite. I guess I pushed it because—well, your brother and your mom, they’re so alike in a lot of ways. And I’ve always —maybe it’s selfish, but I’ve always seen a lot of myself in you. . . . The way you step up for this family—not just with this silly Twitter thing. . . . but every day. You’re here. You show up. Without being asked. . . . You’ve always been above and beyond. More than we could have ever asked for from a kid. And I’m sorry if I ever made you feel less than for it.”
(pg. 330)
Jack needed to hear that it was okay if he didn’t want to take on the business. I also found it cute how the dad mentioned how Jack loved the place so much he wanted to live there, so the dad assumed that Jack would take on the business. What was special about this moment, though, was how Jack felt at peace. He was finally breathing fresh air, knowing he didn’t need to be trapped, but also knowing that it was still an option. And as a senior in high school, I think all you want to feel is that there are options out there——-to have a choice/say in your life.
After everything Pepper and Jack had been through, it’s only fitting that they find out that they were each other’s Weasel match. Or well, that Pepper found out. When Pepper overheard Jack talking to Paul about it, my heart dropped for her because she felt like a fool. All this time he knew and he was either pitying her or playing her. And that hurt because she liked him. Jack really should have done it better, but hey, things worked out well for them because at least the person they wanted those people to be were each other. And there’s something fated in that.
I also thought that when Pepper and Jack started texting, she should have also seen that as a clue because Wolf and Bluebird had these distinct voices and humor. So it’s kind of a wonder that they didn’t know.
The ending was a fun twist of events. Pepper went to college, but also worked at Girl Cheesing part time to learn the ropes so she could open up her own shop one day. I loved that because in a way it would be like her mom’s dream coming true for her. Pepper working at Girl Cheesing was also very fitting because she got to make her creations and sell them there. Jack was working as an app creator for BLB and was going to school for that. I loved the moment when Pooja, Jack, Ethan, Stephan, Phillip, Paige, and Pepper were all chilling after having been away at college for a while. It was a very wholesome moment compared to how divided everyone is in the beginning. What would have been better was if they each got another tweet at the end, getting called out by someone because that would be very movie-esque.
But I liked how they both deleted their Twitters and put their Twitter wars behind them. The article about where they were now was also very amusing to see how people were still invested in them after all this time. What had me cheesing from ear to ear was their ship name. Emma Lord deliberately chose these two names just so she could make an overall cheese pun. I mean, if you got it, do it. We gotta love our Pepeprjack.
It was cute when Jack finally had Pepper try Grandma’s Special sandwich because they had a whole Twitter War about it and yet she didn’t even know what the heck she was fighting about. I mean, don’t all fights eventually end up that way? But the Grandma was up to something too because she knew to put peppers in that sandwich. It was an omen that they were meant to be.
Their Twitter war was over, but their lives were just starting and I was genuinely happy for them. They’ve been through a lot personally and with each other. Their relationship also seemed more genuine to me in the love-hate plot because it didn’t seem too outright in a shift because Jack always liked her, but now he was showing that differently. But you know what they say, with war comes love. And this war definitely brought them together.
If you read this book, what was your favorite part? Least favorite part? What did you think of Tweet Cute?
What was your favorite Twitter war to happen?
Let me know below in the comments so I can be culturally Twittered 🙈
I hope you have a beautiful day whenever and wherever you might be reading this . And remember to always say nice things because positivity is better than holding onto hurt 😊.
As always, with love,
Rating
4.46 Full Bloom Flowers
Characters: Pepper and Jack are two people you grow to like the more you get to know and understand what they’re going through. You also gotta love their humor!
Plot: The best Twitter wars breeds the best stories
Writing: The dual perspectives was very purposeful as it gave you an inside look as to how both of them felt. It also helps you connect with both of them more.
Romance: Pepperjack had a lot of gouda moments 😉