Anyone But You (Twisted Lit)

by Kim Askew and Amy Helmes

[Raven]

The Caputo/Monte rivalry has gone on for decades, and no one in the respective families is even sure what started it at this point. They only know they loathe one another and want the other’s Italian eatery to fail so they can mark themselves as the winners. After a Monte prank closes a struggling Cap’s for repairs, the Caputo family plan a grand reopening under the guise of their daughter, Gigi’s, sixteenth birthday party believing that not even a Monte would ruin a young girl’s party. When a handsome young man and his friend crash the party and takes Gigi’s first kiss, she finds herself quickly losing her heart to her enemy. Roman Monte shares her feelings, but being together is harder than they want it to be. Hoping to gain the approval of their families, they set out to discover the cause of the rift between them, hoping to right the wrongs to unite their families. Can they do it? Or will only a tragic ending bring their families together?
I should probably start off by telling you, I never liked Romeo and Juliet. I first read it when I was about five years old and hated it from the get go. Yes, the Disney movies I grew up with were far reaching, but a three day relationship that resulted in six deaths and was toted as being a tragic romance just wasn’t doing it for me. In true Twisted Lit fashion, my dislike for Romeo and Juliet wasn’t a deal breaker for the story. If anything, Anyone But You made me enjoy the story slightly better.

The story is written in two parts, switching between time periods alternatively between chapters. While reading about the current goings-on about Gigi and Roman, you are also getting to see Nick and Benny’s interactions and what caused the feud between the Caputos and Montes to begin with. The chapters aren’t advertised with font or header effects to tell you from the start which time period you are reading, but after being jarred by the story a few chapters, I got into the habit of scanning the page for a name before diving back into the story. While that is something that bothers me, it might go unnoticable to someone else. I think I just get carried away by the story and forget that things might change. My galley didn’t start new chapters on a new page, and sometimes I found myself just skipping over the chapter titles as I read, which is a habit I have always had. The writing is done well enough though that you never need to re-read more than a paragraph if you get the same jolt as I did.

The characters are nice. It’s fun to see who is playing the part of the original in this modernization. While Gigi had more depth to her than Juliet did, the rest of the characters were still rather shallow in their development. This kept it similar to the original, but didn’t exactly make the new characters endearing. What really saved the story was the relationship between Nick and Benny in the past tense. Showing their relationship with one another, seeing what caused the feud, really saved the story for me. Yes, Benny over-reacted, but trying to place myself in his shoes, I understood it. He was being horribly stubborn, but after everything he had been through, I at least understood why. I found his story to be far more captivating than anything Gigi and Roman had to tell. Just as Romeo and Juliet fell for one another quickly, Roman and Gigi jumped into their relationship just as quickly. I found their relationship to be more believable, but I did like how the homage to the original was left intact in an obvious way instead of changing it to be unrecognizable.

I did really enjoy this book. I laughed, I cried, I had a nice time with it. My heart just broke for Benny, even once he started acting the jerk. I’ve recommended the series before, this book just re-enforces that recommendation.

Read this and other reviews at my blog.