Bubbling up with Helena

The Book

• Title: Tweet Cute
• Author: Emma Lord
• Publisher:  Wednesday Books
• Release Date: 1/21/20
• Genre: Fiction
• Age Range: Young Adult
• Rating: ★★★★★
• Publisher’s Summary: 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.

Tweet Cute is such a fun read. It included many of my favorite things: cheese, baking, social media. There is a bubbly and fun energy that runs rampant through this whole book.

Lord did a great job of characterizing Pepper and Jack. Each of them has a clear voice that is distinct from the other. While at first they seem to have very opposing personalities, it becomes clear that they are both witty, driven, and passionate. I wanted to be friends with both of them by the end of the book.

The book also reads like a love letter to New York City. While Pepper is from Nashville and nervous to leave the Upper East Side, Jack is able to show her the ropes and teaches her to use the subway ansd the bus system to get to the Upper West Side and to the East Village where he lives. It warmed my little New Yorker heart.

Some of my favorite elements of Tweet Cute are the descriptions of food. I definitely wanted to try Pepper’s monster cake and her “So Sorry Blondies.” I also wish her food blog was real, so I could follow it and read about her and her sister Paige’s cooking and baking adventures.

It’s possible that I already own three copies of this book, and I certainly plan on reading it several more times.

Food Pairing: Grilled Cheese

Of course, as this book is about two dueling grilled cheeses, I had to try to make the recicpe for grilled cheese that Lord describes in the book. It is described as sourdough bread with apple jam, munster, cheddar, and honey mustard.

It turns out that apple jam is hard to acquire in NYC in a pandemic, so I used the pumpkin butter I had in my fridge instead to add the same warm, cinnamony, slightly fruity flavor to the sandwich. I also added tomatoes to the sandwich to replace the “secret ingredient” that Pepper discovers at the end of the novel (sweet peppers).

I am pleased to report that this sandwich was DELICIOUS. The sweetness of the pumpkin butter contrasted with the tangy mustard so nicely. The cheese was gooey, but not overpowering. Of course, I was also pretty proud of the bread I made that served as the base of the sandwich.

My husband doesn’t like grilled cheese because he says it’s “too cheesy” (as if there is such a thing). However, he reported that this was one of the best sandwiches he’d ever had.