Books & Baking – What I Like About You

Hey, lovelies! Today on Books & Baking we will be talking about a 2020 release that I purchased specifically for this blog feature. The preorder incentive was a bookmark and (drumroll) a recipe card! So, obviously I couldn’t resist. I also used this recipe for my daughter’s birthday. I was planning to make cupcakes for her birthday anyway, so two birds, one stone and all that. This round of Books & Baking will focus on What I Like About You by Marisa Kanter.

Book: What I Like About You by Marisa Kanter

Read my full review here!

This book was full of sweetness (get it? Because of the cupcakes?), but it also dealt with grief and the struggle of having an online identity that’s different from your in person one. I really enjoyed that this book was focused around book blogging. There were a few things I disagreed with, but overall I liked the main characters point of view on what it means to be a book blogger, and a well known one online. The only thing I didn’t like was the secret keeping trope, but I didn’t totally hate it in this instance. I understood why Halle didn’t want to share her online persona with someone she now knew in both worlds. Overall, I enjoyed this story and it’s characters.

“That’s the problem with words. In my head, words are magic. My thoughts are eloquent and fierce. On the page, words are music. In the clicks of my keyboard, in the scratches of pencil meeting paper. In the beauty of the eraser, of the backspace key. On the page, the words in my head sing and dance with the precision of diction and the intricacies of rhythm. Out loud? Words are the worst.” 

“It’s knowing the world might be a trash fire, but it’s less trash when there are people to help navigate the darkness. Friendship is messy. Hard. Infuriating. Awesome. Fragile. Durable. Impossible. Worth it. Always worth it.”

Baking: Lemon Raspberry Cupcakes

Above is the wonderful recipe card that I got as my preorder incentive. I love books with food in them and this one was stuffed full of cupcakes and baking. It made me want to bake some cupcakes and eat them while I was reading. This recipe was pretty easy. Though, I’d never zested a lemon before, so that was interesting. The mixing everything together was the easy part, everything after putting them in the oven was hard.

Honestly, I’m not sure what I did wrong, but they did not come out how I expected them to at all. The cupcakes were basically ruined in my attempts to get them out of my pan. I never use the cupcake liners, but I think I should have. I also think I should have baked them a little bit longer, but I almost always overbake things and I didn’t want to do that with these. I also had issues with the frosting. It wasn’t very frosting like. I was expecting it to be thicker, like frostings I have made in the past. I’m not even sure if it was supposed to be thicker, but it definitely didn’t stay where I wanted it to. Despite all of these issues, they still tasted delicious. The combination of lemon in the cupcake and the raspberry in the frosting was weird but so delicious. So, they look terrible but they taste really good and the taste is all I really care about. Do these sound like something you would try? Leave a comment and let me know!

Keep on reading lovelies, Amanda.

What I Like About You by Marisa Kanter

GoodReads Summary:
Can a love triangle have only two people in it? Online, it can… but in the real world, it’s more complicated. In this debut novel Marisa Kanter explores what happens when internet friends turn into IRL crushes.
There are a million things that Halle Levitt likes about her online best friend, Nash.
He’s an incredibly talented graphic novelist. He loves books almost as much as she does. And she never has to deal with the awkwardness of seeing him in real life. They can talk about anything…
Except who she really is.
Because online, Halle isn’t Halle—she’s Kels, the enigmatically cool creator of One True Pastry, a YA book blog that pairs epic custom cupcakes with covers and reviews. Kels has everything Halle doesn’t: friends, a growing platform, tons of confidence, and Nash.
That is, until Halle arrives to spend senior year in Gramps’s small town and finds herself face-to-face with real, human, not-behind-a-screen Nash. Nash, who is somehow everywhere she goes—in her classes, at the bakery, even at synagogue.
Nash who has no idea she’s actually Kels.
If Halle tells him who she is, it will ruin the non-awkward magic of their digital friendship. Not telling him though, means it can never be anything more. Because while she starts to fall for Nash as Halle…he’s in love with Kels.
Review:
The cupcakes were what sold me on this book. I love a book that has delicious treats and What I Like About You was full of cupcakes. This was a sweet and entertaining YA story. Halle and her brother move in with her grandfather for Halle’s senior year of high school while her parents are off filming another documentary. Her grandmother has recently died and they’re all learning how to deal with the loss. At the same time, she’s working on her college applications. Part of that is coming up with new things for her blog. She runs a book blog where she talks about books and also bakes bookish cupcakes. She’s most excited about the possibility of doing a cover reveal for a well-known author that is one of her favorite authors. She wants to work in the publishing industry, like her grandmother, and her first step to that is her blog and college. On her blog and her blog-related social media, Halle goes by the name Kels because she wanted to make a name for herself outside of what her grandmother was known for.
So, when Halle meets her online best friend, Nash, in her new town she doesn’t know how to tell him that she is Kels. This is one of my least favorite tropes, keeping secrets or miscommunication. But I sort of understood why Halle didn’t tell Nash who she was. I definitely think it could have been handled better, but I could see where she was coming from.
Overall, this book was good. There were good family dynamics. Halle’s brother was bisexual. Her friend group was interesting and I liked that they showed they were Halle’s friend and not just Nash’s when the truth came out about her being Kels. I also liked the conversations about religion. Many of the characters are Jewish. Halle and her brother are, but they missed out on a lot while moving around with their parents. So, they learn new things and traditions about their religion. They learn from their friends and from their grandfather. I liked that none of the characters had the same relationship with religion. Much like in real life, they each took something different from their beliefs. This is definitely a story I’ll be recommending, and I have a books & baking post planned for the future!

Keep on reading lovelies, Amanda.