You Started It

 Book Info:

You Started It by Jackie Khalilieh

Genre: Young Adult Contemporary

Publishing Date: May 20, 2025

Synopsis:

Better Than the Movies meets Olivia Rodrigo’s SOUR, a new YA romance from Something More author, Jackie Khalilieh.

Seventeen-year-old Jamie Taher-Foster has big plans for Senior Year. She’s made a list of things and places in Toronto she and her boyfriend of three years, Ben Cameron, need to check off before graduating. And the biggest plan of all: a very special night for the two of them at the upcoming Winter Formal. But then Ben arrives back home after a summer away with an unthinkable announcement: he wants to break up.

And when Jamie discovers him with Olivia Chen the next day, she is determined to get him back. Even if that means fake dating the younger, curly-haired, TikTok dancer, Axel Dahini, whose bicycle she accidentally ran over.

Though she and Axel have nothing in common aside from their shared Arab heritage—she’s a messy, type A with anxiety, he’s carefree but meticulous—their forced time together brings them to better understand one another. And for Jamie, it just might mean learning that not all experiences or people need to be crossed off a list.

Content Warning: anxiety, panic attacks, claustrophobia, alcoholism, absent parent


Review - This was a cute fake dating romance. I was also really invested in the plotline with meeting with her father again and discovering more of her identity. I also really connected with the IBS representation. This is the second book I've read by this author and I've loved both! 


 

Book Links:

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/156727073

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/You-Started-Jackie-Khalilieh-ebook/dp/B0DDSG4RFR/

Barnes & Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/you-started-it-jackie-khalilieh/1146201918

IndieBound: https://bookshop.org/p/books/you-started-it-jackie-khalilieh/21754715

 

About the Author:

JACKIE KHALILIEH is a Palestinian Canadian writer with a penchant for Samoyeds, to-do lists and staying up way too late. She is passionate about positive representation within her writing.

Something More, her debut YA novel, was shortlisted for the Ruth & Sylvia Schwartz Award, as well as the Snow Willow Award, and was selected for several Best of 2023 lists, including the New York Public Library and Audible Books Canada among others.

She resides just outside Toronto, Canada, with her husband and two daughters, continuing to complain nightly about having to cook dinner.

 

Author Links:

Website: https://www.jackiekhalilieh.com/

Twitter: https://x.com/jackiekhalilieh

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jackiekhalilieh

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/22382957

 

Tour Schedule:

https://tbrandbeyondtours.com/2025/03/26/tour-schedule-you-started-it-by-jackie-khalilieh/

 

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