Meet Cute Diary is YA LGBTQ+ contemporary romance by Emery Lee. The representation and the conversations in this book make my heart happy.

CW: transmisia, mention of suicide attempt, internet trolls, hate comments, panic attacks

Meet Cute Diary is full of meet cutes giving hope to trans-teens on tumblr. I was here for this queer fake-dating story.

Noah was sassy and I loved watching him on his journey of self-discovery. He was very much a self involved teenager and I enjoyed watching him learn and become more aware.

I definitely recommend reading this if you’re looking for a teen finding himself and the obstacles along the way

This is such a fun read! I love the protagonist, Noah, and all the hijinks that he gets into. I also love how his relationships with each person in the book (brother, best friend, love interest) are all unique and believable. I often see YA characters reacting the same way to each person in their life...but that's really not how young people go through the world.

I do think the beginning could be sped up just a little bit to get to some of the more enticing scenes at the bookshop and between Noah and the love interest. That's were thinks started to really take off for me and I wish we could have gotten there a tiny bit faster. That being said, the rest of the pacing is well executed. I will be recommending that my college students check out this fun, yet important book.

Ive never been so disappointed in a book before. I am a gay trans man, who is perpetually single and yearning for love, so I was so excited for this book. And the cover??? It’s gorgeous and so cute. Ive been posting about this book for months on my insta. So I had high expectations. Well. I hated it and DNFed at 60%

The main character was unbearable. Noah is so annoying and entitled. Really dude U spent 400 of your parents money and u mad they cut u off?????? And mad he’s expected to get a job if he wants money???? And he expects everyone to be there for him and give him everything. His best friend, brother, parents. And he is so judgmental to all of them. And he expresses 0 empathy toward anyone. A poor coworker throws up on him, and instead of being concerned like a kind normal person, he gets mad and is an asshole to them for several scenes. He’s just a terrible main character, and at least from what I read he has no growth or self awareness.

Sorry but the meet cute blog sounds so unrealistic, and I just couldn’t suspend my disbelief enough to go along with this plot. The premise is the blog is a place to publish submissions from anons, but of course Noah makes them all up. But he sets all the stories in his hometown, Miami, and all the stories are about mlm ftm teens. Like of course you would get called out for that being fake, no one would believe that in the first place. And if he has so many followers, why couldn’t he just actually take submissions and make the blog real. It makes 0 sense. And for some reason he stops posting the stories the blogs is made for, and instead posts his own relationship. And people like that? No, if they didn’t unfollow you already, they def would after u make it your personal account for your teen summer romance.

And then the romance. ... I’m sorry what. So some dude he met just twice before somehow recognized him from his random anon blog. That. Doesn’t make sense. And my biggest book peeve is insta love, and this novel is heavy on that. Their romance sounds so creepy and stalker is, and makes me uncomfortable. And they are supposed to be fake dating, but keep making out when they are alone. O. Okay?After dating for two weeks they are both so emotionally invested and are talking about being together forever. I DNFed after they went without seeing each other for a few days, acted like the world was ending cause they were separated, and then talked about having kids. It’s been. Two weeks. I couldn’t do it anymore.

***Full review and blog link to follow later***


Meet Cute Diary is a wonderful young adult book. This Emery Lee tale features a coming of age journey for a trans boy and his non cis friend.

Noah is in town for the summer, living with his brother, and living as a boy for the first time. He runs a popular blog about trans men finding love. All of this is in an effort to give trans people hope of finding love.

In the beginning, I found Noah to be annoying. Yes, he's a self centered teen who thinks his problems are everything. But, seriously, it's spot on behavior for a sixteen year old. And wow, the social media part of this story is also spot on. Every single part of it.

Noah's journey towards finding his real self, and his real feelings about love, is a long, bumpy road.

When someone learns that Noah is the blogger, he's suddenly in a "cute on paper" romance with Drew that doesn't always feel right.

And all the while, Noah's spending time with his co-worker Devin, who's trying to figure out what gender terms work for them. Their conversations are wonderful, poignant, and well worth a read. Everything about Devin is impressive, written with knowledge and a whole lot of care. Their friendship is important, full of understanding, compassion, caring, support, and encouragement. Their friendship changes both of them for the better. I enjoy the realistic and honest feel to their relationship.

And for both teens, the trouble involved with their journeys are deeply explored. Being trans. Body dysphoria. Gender definitions and the ongoing fluidity of figuring of what feels right. Seeing pronoun changes throughout is stellar representation of the struggle. Best of all, there's no open homophobia or transphobia that's illustrated. Yes, it's there but it's not in the forefront at all, which is wonderful. Instead, this story is all about their ever evolving feelings about themselves.

Race is also an aspect that is seen, but not a big issue, which is amazing. Noah is tri-racial and it's never a big part of his story. How fantastic!

As well, Noah's relationship with his best friend Becca is an ongoing aspect of this story. The author excels in exploring the give and take in friendships, and the value of true friendship. Living with teen drama every day, I love the way this is explored.

I highly recommend Meet Cute Diary for anyone looking for some understanding of the non-cis journey. Trans. Non-binary. Gender queer. Emery Lee explores it all through these two fabulous characters. I wish every teen had this as required reading. I also would love to see this as movie. Visibility is important and this book is a wonderful way for anyone questioning their gender to feel seen.

3.5 stars

Noah, the m.c., is the curator of the Meet Cute Diary (MCD) blog, and he is spending the summer in Colorado with his older brother while his parents work on their impending relocation to California from Florida. A lot of changes are happening in Noah's life, but what stands out most for him - at least at the start - is what's happening with MCD. He's being accused of fabricating the stories there (this is true - he does that), and his followers are in two camps: (1) mad and (2) unwilling to believe this could be true.

The premise here is cute, and I die hard for trans rep in general, but there are some gaps. Noah begins a fake relationship with one character for the sake of the blog. While the characters agree to this mutually, the situation highlights Noah's wild attention to a set of romantic norms that are truly bonkers, his general cluelessness, and his hypocrisy. It turns out Noah cannot abide lying even though his whole internet career subsists on this for a long time. The second love interest is wonderful and predictable in all the ways, but you'll remember this character for pronouns. Lee is doing something that I admire: bringing attention to pronouns, using them, etc., but aspects of this become didactic to a distracting degree. Most bizarre to me is the ultimate outcome of the MCD, There are some points of extreme convenience and/or glossing over that felt like they really needed more attention and/or explanation. Oh, and some of the characters are real dirt bags and need more punishment than they receive.

I'm going to be VERY excited to read more of Lee's work. I'll hope for a bit more follow through and development in future installments, but I am sure I'll be entertained (as I was here).

The story is told from the perspective of Noah, a recently out trans man, as he spends the summer living with his brother while their parents are in the process of moving from Florida to California. Noah is a forthright protagonist, who doesn't mince words. Some may be turned off by how candid Noah can be at times, especially in the beginning. Lee really tries to highlight some of Noah's flaws. You know it's there to give him a hole to dig himself out of throughout the novel, but it may have been so front-loaded that some readers may be so turned off they may not get to the point where Noah realizes that some changes are needed. For the patient reader, you'll be rewarded for sticking with him.
Noah's main focus is his blog, the titular "Meet Cute Diary," which tries to present positive trans romance experiences to his avid readership. The issue is that Noah has not quite experienced the love that he projects through the blog and we follow his attempts to understand this aspect of his life, as well as understand who he wants to be now that he can finally live as his authentic self. Lee walks a fine line between presenting a romantic story without pushing it into fairy tale territory. There are many solid aspects of this story, but you definitely need to be patient through the first third to be rewarded with all the things that made this novel shine.

I enjoyed this book SO much!!! Noah is an amazing narrator and I was so happy to live in his head and go through this journey with him. Seeing a confident trans MC just living his life, navigating social media popularity and relationships with family, friends, and romantic partners was EVERYTHING. I loved the entire cast of characters, all felt unique and real and relatable in their own way. Could not put the book down when I started reading it and the representation it provides is SO freaking important - where being trans and queer is part of the story but not THE story, and showcasing the diversity of the LGBTQ+ community. My only complaint is that some of the conversations sounded a little too much like adults talking as opposed to teens, which I find is pretty common in YA, but did not really detract from my enjoyment of the book!

Meet Cute Diary, by Emery Lee, is exactly that — cute. It tells the story of Noah, a trans teenage boy who is staying with his brother for a summer in Colorado. While there, Noah plans to work on his blog (the Meet Cute Diary in question), hang out with his brother, and fall in love. When he meets Drew, the cute boy at the local bookshop, he seems to have the last step all figured out. But when he gets a job at a summer camp with his brother, and meets Devin, things get a little more complicated.

Meet Cute Diary has a lot going for it. The queer rep throughout is amazing. Beyond Noah, who is unabashedly trans, there are characters exploring their gender identity, and other queer side characters as well. Noah and his brother are mixed race, and while this subject could be explored in more depth, it certainly informs their decisions on the page.

Unfortunately, Meet Cute Diary suffers from a relatively unlikable main character. Noah is annoying in all the ways teenagers can be annoying — he is selfish and self-centered, quick to judge others, a little rash. And while that all makes sense and is usually fun to read in a YA novel, the fact that his selfishness and quick judgements are so often rewarded is a little harder to swallow.

The side characters sell this one. Noah’s brother is charming and interesting, in spite of little time on the page. Noah’s best friend, stuck back in Florida and not entirely happy with Noah’s behavior, is a character who could carry a whole book, and Devin’s exploration of identity gives the book a lot of its depth.

Another wonderful thing is that Noah’s family, and Devin’s too for that matter, are entirely supportive of his being queer. Although there is space for books about trans and queer characters with unsupportive families, of course, it is nice to see the opposite sometimes as well.

The Meet Cute Diary suffers at times from skating past an issue rather than diving in very deeply. Concepts are raised and dropped without enough tile spent on them. In spite of this, and Noah’s supreme unlikability, Meet Cute Diary is a cute, fun, gender-affirming novel, perfect especially for any gender-questioning teen.

Thank you to NetGalley and Quill Tree Books for the ARC!

This book was so, SO great in terms of diversity and representation! And the story was fantastic! I sat down on a Saturday morning and blazed through this in one day. Highly, highly recommend!

Oh fuck, there went my heart. It got run over by MEET CUTE DIARY, had a few vanilla lattes dropped on it, and now it lies between the well-worn (digital) pages of this ARC...
In other words, please please please go read it, it is overwhelmingly adorable and sweet!

Noah Ramirez believes himself an expert on romance, after all-he runs a popular blog about it.
The only thing is that every beautiful love story he posts- is fake.
Once he is exposed by a troll, he’s willing to do whatever he can to take away the negative spotlight: even dating Drew, a fan of his blog. Together, they agree to fake a relationship to save the blog, the only thing? Noah realizes relationships aren’t as easy in real life as they are to make up.

Okay, I’m going to be absolutely honest. I was not a fan of Noah. To me, he was very whiny and judgmental without reason, making assumptions on everyone the moment he met them. The whole book, he got on my nerves and caused me to not enjoy the story as much as I so desperately wanted to.
But, this is a YA contemporary novel. A story about a 16yr old boy who realizes love isn’t all that he thought it was. A boy that is already dealing with the judgments from the world around him about him being trans, it makes sense why he is so quick to judge. So I get it.
It took me a really long time to, but I understand Noah’s attitude on life, and it matches a sixteen year old really well (if not a bit more juvenile).

Other than that, I love the idea and plot of this story. A blog about trans people falling in love, spreading the hope and joy for everyone that they too would one day have that moment? I LOVE that! The idea behind it is really cute, and it was really interesting being able to see what it looks like from a bloggers point of view, versus what it looks like from their followers point of view.

The story definitely had a lot of ups and downs, and showed the truth about relationships and how all is not as it seems. It’s intriguing enough that you can’t help but turn each page in excitement, never knowing if it will all fall apart or will end merrily.

Overall, if you’re wanting an interesting read with lots of representation and a real storyline, then this would be a great read for you!

((Thank you Netgalley and HarperCollins Children’s Book publishing for an ARC in replace of an honest reveiw

I'm obviously biased, but I think this book is pretty good. This is a story all about showcasing that trans people deserve happy endings, but also happy beginnings and happy middles. Recognizing the humanity of trans people goes beyond seeing our oppression, and requires believing that we deserve to live full and happy lives that focus on us finding love, building friendships, and taking joy in our expression of self. Ultimately, that was the goal of this book, and I think it does a pretty great job of it.

This book was an absolute joy! More stories about trans joy please! This was just an absolute stunning debut and I cannot wait to see what Emery writes next!

Don't even get me started on how much I loved Meet Cute Diary! Noah's voice is so perfect. He's got all the snark and sarcasm paired with so much heart; you can tell how much he cares about the readers of his blog. I was so in for the ride of how Drew and Noah's relationship developed, and Devin's exploration of gender and what feels most authentic to em was beautiful!

Meet Cute Diary is a new YA LGBTQ+ contemporary romance by Emery Lee. Just thinking about the amount of representation in this book makes me heart happy.

The lead Noah Ramirez is triracial ( white, Japanese, and Afro-Caribean), he's also trans and bisexual. Noah's best friends is a lesbian and there is a character who is gender-nonconforming who settles on using the e/em pronouns. I love that the book will be broadening readers knowledge of pronouns because I know it did mine. The book also mentions tough topics such as depression, suicide, and high anxiety.

I kind of skipped over what the actual book is about, but I think the synopsis is prefect so if you haven't by chance read it scroll up and do that lol Anyways I loved the idea of Noah's blog, the Meet Cute Diary, where it's sole purpose was to give trans kids like himself hope of finding love. Thanks to internet trolls who are the worst he ends up scrambling to keep it going. That's when the fake dating trope with a boy who inspired one of Noah's meet cute posts begins. I don't want to write spoilers, so I'm going to stop there but let's just say it doesn't turn out like your typical fake dating scenarios.

I really enjoyed Noah, but he's not without his faults and annoyances. He is a bit overdramatic and a bit self-centered, but I mean this is a YA book and what 16-year-old doesn't think the world revolves around them. Thankfully he eventually acknowledges and works to fix his faults, especially when it comes to his friendships. I loved his brother Brian, he was so supportive of Noah's transition and was always ready to jump to his defense. I also love the gender non-conforming character, I don't want to say eir name because e is not mentioned in the synopsis but I loved em. E was adorably awkward, so sweet with eir love of art and the camp kids, and my heart broke every time e had an anxiety attack. The book emphasizes the importance of not letting others affect your pronoun decision. It's up to no one but you to decide what pronouns fit you and once you choose it doesn't mean that can't change if they don't feel right.

In the end, Meet Cute Diary by Emery Lee is a must-read with a great cast of characters and a story that keeps you invested. Like the blurb for the book says if you're a fan of Felix Ever After you're really going to enjoy this book. It's one I will be preordering, so I can add it to my shelf when it releases and one I'll be recommending often.

Noah Ramirez, creator of a blog called Meet Cute Diary, is an expert on crafting and sharing trans happily ever love stories. Many of his readers believe they are true until an anonymous troll starts leaving comments that the stories are fake. When everything Noah worked for starts to fall a part, he meets a new friend that agrees to a fake relationship to save the blog. He eventually has to decide what is more important: saving his blog or staying true to himself.

Meet Cute Diary is clever, heart-warming, and full of laughter. While it incorporates the usually young adult elements: complicated relationships, discovering oneself, etc. Emery Lee doesn't just skim the surface. As readers, we are provided an opportunity to think deeper on the concepts of gender, acceptance, and being yourself. I loved when the characters modeled how easy it is to ask for consent in all situations, discuss and use pronouns, and address situations that were harmful to each other. Most importantly, Meet Cute Diary is an empowering book that provides space for trans youth to see themselves in literature.

Meet Cute Diary is a beautifully written book that articulates the joys and struggles of teenage years. I know this is a book I will add to my classroom library because joyful stories that provide representation matter.

A huge thank you to HarperCollins and Netgalley for this ARC of Meet Cute Diary. I enjoyed the read and will be recommending it to others!

This book was a whole rollercoaster, from fake dating to friends-to-lovers situations, it kept me so enticed throughout the whole book. We follow our main character, Noah, a 16-year-old trans boy as he deals with living in a new state (from Florida to Arizona and finally to California with his parents), a new long-distance friendship with one of his closest friends Becca, trying to find love, AND his Tumblr blog called Meet Cute Diary, a space where he posts meet-cute stories featuring trans people. When his blog gets called out as fictional, he tries to prove otherwise by fake-dating a cute boy he met at a bookstore, Drew. The story picks up from there and Noah faces new challenges in dating and starts to realize that love isn't exactly what he makes it seem in his Diary entries.
I was so excited for this book, I really thought it would be up there with other YA romance novels but I just couldn't enjoy it as much because the main character was so annoying to read about. Noah is such a selfish, self-centered, unreasonable, kinda spoiled??, character that I genuinely felt annoyed at times reading his interactions with his friends and family. He has reasons to be upset but the way he would treat friends/family when they tried to comfort him was so infuriating. At times, he did lend his hand to anyone in need but it still doesn't make up for the many times he messed up.
Aside from this, the book as a whole was so entertaining and lovely. As I am not a trans person I cannot speak to the representation in this book, but there is a character that uses e/em/eirs pronouns and it was the first time I had ever read something with those pronouns! This book is own voices, as the character also goes by these pronouns. Noah himself states that he has a mixed background, Japanese and Puerto Rican I believe (possibly another ethnicity that I cannot recall) and the author also identifies with these. It was refreshing to see this representation, as I feel the author did a good job in not making these traits be the only personality traits of the characters but rather just a part of who they are.
Overall, I would recommend this book! I think many people can benefit from the story, even if I had some problems with the main character's behavior- there's more to the book than just that.

I read this book in one sitting, I loved it so much! A pitch-perfect YA that a wide variety of readers will enjoy. Meet Cute Diary perfectly encapsulates the young reader experience with its honesty and depiction of not only social media issues but gender/sexual identity. Emery Lee does a phenomenal job presenting all of this in a book filled with joy and plenty of swoon-worthy moments. Highly recommended.

The most notable and redeemable aspect of this book is undoubtedly the representation. It's so important to not only have trans characters but BIPOC trans characters. This novel secures a space in a predominantly white, cishet industry for BIPOC trans youth, which again, is such important and noteworthy work.

However, I could not finish the book. Halfway through, I lost interest in the main character (Noah) and his plight for romance. Noah is very self-centered and does very little emotional growth; he does not reflect on his own prejudices against white people. There is no other motivation or conflict to hate white people except for the fact that they exist. The novel would be much more powerful if white people were not the central focus of Noah's hatred and frustrations. In other words, if the writing is meant to decenter cishet white people from literature, then Noah's focus should be more on his romance, not the two dimensional white persons present in the narrative.

Additionally, the character lacks empathy, even for people he finds tolerable, like his best friend, Becca. If the attention is not devoted to Noah and Noah alone, then everyone else becomes irrelevant to the main character. This aspect of the book, I found, was highly triggering because it reminds me of the toxic friendships and persons in this period of my life.

Lastly, I was a little disturbed that a 16-year-old boy is dating an 18-year-old man. There are many emotional differences between a college freshman and a high school sophomore/junior. This book seems like it should be written for a New Adult audience.

I wanted to like this. And I liked parts of it. But overall I found Noah to be very unlikable, immature (yes even for a 16yo), very selfish and not aware of his own privilege. I also found the Tumblr references dated, or is just that I stopped using Tumblr after the fosta/sesta law. (I am almost 3x Noah's age).

I loved how easily Noah related to Devin's transness and gave em the space to explore who they were. I still LOL about Brian thinking you could buy a binder at Target. The book was easy to read and I did finish it. But overall it was just okay.