As a fan of Jesse Q. Sutanto I was so excited for this one and it was so good! Anything You’ve Got Mail will always hook me. And when you combine gamer girl and mistaken identities? Sign me up. Keep reading this book review for my full thoughts.
Summary
Seventeen-year-old Kiki Siregar is a fabulous gamer girl with confidence to boot. She can’t help but be totally herself… except when she’s online.
Her secret? She plays anonymously as a guy to avoid harassment from other male players. Even her online best friend—a cinnamon roll of a teen boy who plays under the username Sourdawg—doesn’t know her true identity. Which is fine, because Kiki doesn’t know his real name either, and it’s not like they’re ever going to cross paths IRL.
Until she transfers to an elite private school for her senior year and discovers that Sourdawg goes there, too.
But who is he? How will he react when he finds out Kiki’s secret? And what happens when Kiki realizes she’s falling for her online BFF?
Review
(Disclaimer: I received this book from the publisher. This has not impacted my review which is unbiased and honest.)
As someone who played a lot of online video games, wanting to disguise yourself as a guy was so relatable. Talk about the online harassment, inappropriate behavior, and more. I was immediately on Kiki’s side. Not only that, but she’s determined to be herself with no excuses. And you got to love her for it especially in a world which always tries to minimize girls, to have them shrink, and bow to the misogyny. Kiki is who I want to be on my best days.
She’s the person I wish I saw when I looked in the mirror – someone who knows who she is, knows her own voice – and to see the ways in which the world tries to silence her broke my heart. It’s a testimony to change being disruptive, to needing to take a stand and remember our collective power. At the same time, Didn’t See That Coming is swoony, about falling in love with someone despite what we think, and made my heart smile. Find Didn’t See That Coming on Goodreads, Storygraph, Amazon, Bookshop.org, & Blackwells.