[Review] The Only Thing Worse Than Me Is You - Lily Anderson

Summary: Trixie Watson has two very important goals for senior year: to finally save enough to buy the set of Dr. 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. (Pub Date: May 17, 2016)

Review based on an ARC provided by Netgalley.

First of all, I'm not sure I like the official summary... It's not inaccurate but it reveals too much of the story. I'm glad I had forgotten a lot of it before reading or I'd go crazy with expectation.

So we have Trixie who goes to some school for genius and her goal for the year is to stay ahead of her archenemy on the monthly class rank now that it's their senior year so to close their ongoing war ever since first grade. However, things change when her best friend starts dating his and they need to spend more time together. Mixed in this, something strange has been happening to the ranks at school and people may have been unjustly punished.

The book is filled with geek allusions, especially to comic books and the Doctor Who franchising. I could understand most of them but I'd call it the downside of this. I confess I felt uncomfortable at first with so much geek-talk and then it was just overwhelmingly "please just stop!", although I got used by the middle. If you don't know what Doctor Who is, for example, you can still understand like 99% of it but I wonder if you'll be able to ignore the references and just enjoy. I wouldn't.

Perhaps with all that, the main character sometimes would sound obnoxious. It didn't help how she'd usually be proved right. However, she wasn't as irritating as it might sound. I won't say I liked her but I liked many of the other characters enough to just ignore her.

About the main couple, their quarrels were more to the childish side but they don't last for long. So if please just bear with it because they do grow up, fortunately. And then they are cute. A number of moments were simply too sweet and here I am grinning as I type just because I remembered one.

Also, friendship being the other theme for this, the author managed to make us care about so many characters and their relationships that when it came to finding out the culprit, we didn't want him to be anyone. By the way, I still feel bad for suspecting some character, s/he was so nice! I'm so sorry!

As noticeable, I had lots of fun reading this. And I was just thinking of reading a bit and then getting on with life, you know, take my time with this one... but the story grabbed me after a few pages and I just put it down because it was almost dawn. Super recommended for fans of YA's with romance but also more than just that.

Last... I have no idea why that cover and that title. I can't even remember a mention to the sea in the story. Moreover, it's too did-it-myself-on-Paint-but-never-read-the-book.

Rating: 4 out of 5