This was cute! It's definitely a VERY angsty teen feel and it feels like they're in high school rather than college. This might make sense though since they are still freshmen. I guess I probably acted like that too in my first year of uni, I just don't remember!

SO CUTE
The pancakes and the sprinkles?? I love when she goes to the pancake place and the woman is like, what is with you kids, this other punk just asked me the same thing. And Seb is sitting there. One of my fave scenes.

Also my fave line in this book- "You know how it is, can't stay away from things that don't like me." I was kicking my feet at this.

I love an enemies to lovers- they call this 'rivals to lovers'. It's a fun trope. I liked both characters but I found the main character to be a little whiny for my taste. Which, in all honestly, I think I just don't like the teen angst like I used to. I think for someone 15-20 this is probably a perfect amount of angst.

I would like to note that I physically gagged everytime they said the word 'Zine' (Zeen). Do people actually call magazines this? I wasn't clear if that was the name of their specific magazine or what was happening because I thought it was called news bag but then they would say 'the zine' *queue gag* lol. Anyways, I just wanted to mention that because it was cringey.

Because this is an audiobook I will rate the narrator- 3/5. Her voice just wasn't awesome which is completely preference based. I'm VERY picky with audiobook narrators. Funnily enough I liked the voice she put on for Seb better than the voice for the main character.

“The Rival” by Emma Lord is a sweet YA romantic comedy.

I read “Tweet Cute” from Emma Lord and it was very cute so I wanted to read more.

In this book we have rivals Sadie and Seb that compete for the same position at the college newspaper. They were neighbors growing up and competing against each other all throughout school.

I liked the story, but we only have Sadie’s POV so we just see Seb from her subjective perspective. It would have been interesting to find out more about him.

The audiobook is narrated by Jesse Vilinsky. This is my first time listening to a book that she narrated and I think she did a good job with all the characters. I was able to differentiate them and it was easy to follow the story.

I would recommend this book if you like YA novels in an academic setting with rivals to lovers.

Thank you Macmillan Audio and Netgalley for the ALC. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.

Two high school rivals find themselves competing for the only open spot on the campus newspaper. Great on audio narrated by Jesse Vilinsky, this was full of snark, humor and the two leads had amazing chemistry. Highly recommended for fans of authors like Lynn Painter or Rachel Lynn Solomon. Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an early digital and audio copy in exchange for my honest review!