Anyone But You by Kim Askew & Amy Helmes

Anyone But You by Kim Askew by Amy Helmes
Series: Twisted Lit, #3
Source: Authors for Review
Publisher: Merit Press
Publication Date: January 1, 2014

These violent delights have violent ends...

Gigi Caputo is fed up. A vicious act of vandalism has dealt another blow to her family's proud pizza heritage, and the Montes--owners of a rival Italian restaurant--are clearly to blame. The hostility goes far beyond bragging rights for best pizza in Chicago. The Montes have been bent on destroying Cap's for four generations. Even if it means putting herself in harm's way, Gigi's determined to get to the bottom of the feud. Instead, in a secret encounter with Roman Monte, the very boy whose relatives have brought her family such grief, she finds both danger and love at first sight. If the daughter and son of these two warring families fall for each other, can it be anything but a recipe for disaster?

Slowly, Gigi and Roman learn that their story is fatefully linked to the summer of 1933, when two twelve-year-olds, Benny and Nick, hop the turnstile at the Chicago World's Fair. The most stunning wonder of the fair is Stella, who innocently causes a lasting rift between the two boyhood. Wending its way through past and present day, this modern take on Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet is bittersweet, funny, and intensely exciting. It's classic romance--a tale of hate and the only force that can ever defeat it: love.

Romeo & Juliet is one of my least favorite Shakespeare plays. I just can't get over the stupidity of the entire story, and I really don't find it romantic. Insta-love, then everyone dies. That's a real winner there. Which is why I was pleasantly surprised to find that I actually enjoyed Anyone But You. I was expecting the humor and the sense of romantic comedy that comes with these girls together, but this was the first book of theirs that I really liked.

At first, I was a little bit confused, and kind of unsure - as y'all know, I don't follow POV switches very well - unless they're very well written. And while the POVs in Anyone But You weren't badly written, not at all, the first switch was very confusing. Not only did it switch POVs, it all switched eras. Like, all the way back to the thirties - and that was a tiny bit disconcerting at first.

I didn't connect with the main character, Gigi, and I didn't really buy the romance between Roman and Gigi - but I'm willing to forgive the instalove. Because, as I mentioned before, the original play was built on insta-love. I would have liked to have seen more development, but I'm fine with what was presented.

I actually liked the scenes from the past, told through Nick's eyes, better than the present day. Nick was a more complex character, and it was nice to see all of the things that tore Benny & Nick apart. The development in that part of the story was absolutely phenomenal! I predicted what the problem would be, but since I'd already read the play... it was okay.

The most interesting part of Anyone But You was picking out names and faces and personalities from the original play - and comparing them. That was a lot of fun. All in all, Anyone But You really wasn't a bad read. I actually really liked it, and it was a wonderful re-imagining of Romeo & Juliet.