Life is swirling for anx­i­ety-prone high school senior Halle Levitt IRL — in real life. Her beloved grand­moth­er has recent­ly passed away; Halle and her younger broth­er Ollie have moved from North Car­oli­na to Con­necti­cut to live with her grand­fa­ther; her doc­u­men­tary-film mak­ing par­ents have flown off to Israel; her des­per­ate wish is to attend NYU next year. But online, Halle is the super cool and con­fi­dent Kels, the enig­ma behind the blog, ​“One True Pas­try,” which pairs Halle’s favorite things — read­ing and baking.

Kels’s online friends think she’s got it all. She’s a hot shot social media influ­encer who is cho­sen to cre­ate the cov­er reveal for a young adult best-sell­ing author. She also has a spe­cial con­nec­tion with anoth­er young adult blog­ger, Nash, who is a graph­ic nov­el­ist. They plan to meet up at Book­Con — a blog­ger con­ven­tion — but Halle is shocked when they unex­pect­ed­ly meet in a library in her new home­town. She is so shocked in fact, that she neglects to tell Nash who she real­ly is.

Halle set­tles in at her new school, makes friends, joins the syn­a­gogue youth group, and helps her grand­fa­ther cope with the loss of his beloved wife. But under­neath all of these suc­cess­es lies the con­flict Halle cre­at­ed by hid­ing the truth about her real iden­ti­ty; Halle has to dis­cov­er for her­self that she is just as inter­est­ing as her online persona.

What I Like About You speaks to mid­dle and high school read­ers by address­ing con­cerns over — friend­ships, anx­i­ety, grades, hopes, and issues in nav­i­gat­ing social media. Read­ers will relate to both the first-per­son voice of Halle, and to the social media per­sona of Kels, who fakes her con­fi­dence in hash­tags and abbre­vi­a­tions. This book will cap­ti­vate with its engag­ing char­ac­ters, dra­mat­ic sto­ry line, and con­tem­po­rary setting.