You Started It - Hardcover

by Jackie Khalilieh (Author)

Better Than the Movies meets Olivia Rodrigo's Sour in a new YA romance novel 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.

"You Started It is honest, wise, and wholeheartedly romantic, starring a cast of endearingly flawed characters who feel like real friends. A total delight." --Becky Albertalli, New York Times bestselling author of Simon vs the Homo Sapiens Agenda

"A true joy to read. Earnest and effortlessly charming, You Started It embodies everything I adore about YA rom-coms. Jackie Khalilieh has such a talent for writing nuanced characters you can't help but laugh with, cry with, and root for." --Ann Liang, New York Times bestselling author of I Hope This Doesn't Find You

Author Biography

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 the Amy Mathers Teen Book Award, and was selected for several Best Books of 2023 lists, including the New York Public Library and Audible Canada among others. She resides just outside Toronto, Canada, with her husband and two daughters, continuing to complain nightly about having to cook dinner.