ARC Review: The Only Thing Worse Than Me Is You by Lily Anderson

The Only Thing Worse Than Me Is You by Lily Anderson

Expected publication: May 17th 2016

Trixie Watson has two very important goals for senior year: to finally save enough to buy the set of Doctor Who figurines at the local comic books store, and to place third in her class and knock Ben West–and his horrendous new mustache that he spent all summer growing–down to number four.

Trixie will do anything to get her name ranked over Ben’s, including give up sleep and comic books–well, maybe not comic books–but definitely sleep. After all, the war of Watson v. West is as vicious as the Doctor v. Daleks and Browncoats v. Alliance combined, and it goes all the way back to the infamous monkey bars incident in the first grade. Over a decade later, it’s time to declare a champion once and for all.

The war is Trixie’s for the winning, until her best friend starts dating Ben’s best friend and the two are unceremoniously dumped together and told to play nice. Finding common ground is odious and tooth-pullingly-painful, but Trixie and Ben’s cautious truce slowly transforms into a fandom-based tentative friendship. When Trixie’s best friend gets expelled for cheating and Trixie cries foul play, however, they have to choose who to believe and which side they’re on–and they might not pick the same side.

I don’t know what I was expecting with this book but it was way better than I ever could have anticipated. I did have a few problems with the main character but I loved the concept of the book.
The writing was so great and flowed perfectly. I actually read this book in one day because I couldn’t put it down.
I did find Trixie to be annoying a lot of the time. There was this one part towards the beginning of the book that hit me wrong and I couldn’t shake it. She made a comment that because her friends wanted boyfriends that they were “on the fast track to becoming utterly antifeminist” and she also made a few comments that her friends couldn’t be both nerdy/geeky and have/want boyfriends. That really bothered me a lot and I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I went back and forth with myself over how I felt about it and if it was a big deal or not. But in the end, it really bugged me and because of that, I brought this book down from 4 star book to a 3. I know that might not be a big deal to some readers and that’s okay but it really bugged me.

Overall, I really enjoyed this book for the most part. I think a lot of people can relate to the characters and even though I don’t watch Doctor Who, I appreciated all the references as well as the all the other nerdy/geeky references (especially the Marvel ones).