Genre 📚: YA Contemporary, Romance, Coming-of-age
Tropes 💁♀️: Fake dating, Opposites attract
Rep ✔️: Palestinian-Canadian main character, Lebanese-Canadian love interest
CW ⚠️: Anxiety, claustrophobia, panic attacks, alcoholism
Rating ⭐️: 4/5
New auto-buy author unlocked. I just finished Jackie Khalilieh’s Something More and immediately jumped into You Started It. And now I want her next book. Her characters are endearing, easy to root for, and so full of life that I’m willing to forgive them for any teenage rage and miscommunication (I’ll get to that in a sec).
Jamie’s family life has been messy and unpredictable, making her an anxious planner. She likes knowing exactly where her life is going — so it’s a total nightmare when her boyfriend of three years suddenly dumps her for another girl. Thankfully, the new boy in town Axel swoops in, and like a true romantic hero, he covers Jamie by pulling the fake dating card. They begin a partnership (he helps make the ex jealous, she helps with his TikTok biz) while also developing a friendship (he joins her on her bucket list mission, she gets to know his lovely Arab family). It’s all adorable.
Then, the miscommunications started happening and all hell broke loose. It was hard to read Jamie constantly self-sabotage, but it made sense with her character and what she’d been through. What was important for me was her arc, how she handled it and grew from it, and honestly, the execution was pretty damn satisfying. She had a lot to work through — not just with Axel, but with every relationship in her life — and she fully committed. Were some of her tactics cringe? Absolutely. But the girl’s, like, seventeen. We were all cringe at seventeen.
**Much thanks to NetGalley and Tundra Book Group for providing an ARC in exchange for an honest review. You Started It will be released on May 20, 2025.
Sara Bechtol 