~~Thank you to Edelweiss and Tundra Books for the ARC!~~

1.5/5 stars rounded up.

Man, I hate it when I love an author's debut only to not like their sophomore.

I praised Khalilieh quite a bit in my Something More review, particularly her dialogue and ability to write relatable, messy teenagers. The former still holds up here, but as for the latter . . . You Started It's brand of messiness made the story very unbearable for me.

As a fellow girlie who had a lot mental health issues revolving around anxiety (That was most definitely masking the neurodivergence), I'm able to understand/relate to most of Jamie's struggles. But, outside of that, her thoughts and actions throughout the story made me want to slam my head through a wall. She was fully onboard with using Axel to manipulate her ex with getting back with her until she starts liking him, and all of the sudden she's able to see the fact her ex is a scumbag cheater. I was pleading with the book for her to not end up with anyone because this girl oh-so desperately needs to fully develop her frontal lobe and find herself before forming anymore toxic, overdependent relationships. But no! I'm not bothering with a spoiler tag on this one because I feel like it's too obvious, but her and Axel do end up together in the end, and all I could do is nurse the sick, sinking feeling in my heart. Can we please stop normalizing romance being the end goal?

Her not having any girl friends made things worse, especially since she tries to be self-aware about her internal/external misogyny, which only makes the times when she's genuinely being misogynistic worse. This was excruciatingly painful during the scenes with her mom, because she's fully putting the blame of her parents' divorce and dad's absence of her without knowing the full details. Granted, her mom keeping that from her was something she shouldn't done in the first place, but Jamie assuming the absolute worse and being so terrible to a mom who's clearly going through a lot on her own made me dislike this girl so much. But then the story does decide to give her one, it's with her ex's new girl, who has no shame about being a homewrecker! I have never shouted, "This is not what I meant!" as loudly as I did when that happened.

The only reason I'm giving this a two star rather than one is because I still like Khalilieh's dialogue writing and how well they flesh out her characters, even when they're saying the worst possible things at the moment.

All in all, this was very much a disappointment from me. I can only hope Khalilieh's next book will be less toxic-relationship-drama fueled, but I'll wait and see.