Review| Twelfth Knight – Jessica Bucher

This month I was introduced to a new to me author, Jessica Bucher. Her newest book, Twelfth Knight, comes out tomorrow and it’s one I really recommend. It’s a modern day retelling of the classic Shakespeare comedy. Thanks to the author for providing me an ARC to read and review!

Where there’s love, there’s misery.

Violet Noble loves a good challenge. That’s why her parents were so insistent on getting her and her twin brother, Sebastian, a scholarship to Shelfbrooke Academy. But when Sebastian bails on the plan, Violet is left alone in a strange land of rich kids and hot rugby players.

When Violet discovers the academy’s online gossip forum, she finds the courage to comment…under her brother’s profile. Before she knows it, she’s giving dating advice to the captain of the rugby team, Owen Duke, and flirting with his beautiful ex-girlfriend, Lily Thorn.

Now, Violet is falling for Owen, and Lily is falling for fake-Sebastian, and everyone is miserable. Can Violet clean up the mess she’s made…and somehow keep her new friends in the process?

Twelfth Knight is a modern retelling of the classic Shakespeare comedy. It’s the first book in the Shelfbrooke Academy series, a collection of retellings that promise to be a lot more fun than the originals!

Review

This is the first book I’ve read by Jessica Bucher and I really enjoyed it! Twelfth Knight is filled with humor, friendship, romance, family, sports and a little bit of drama. I know it’s a modern day retelling, but in all honesty, I haven’t read much by Shakespeare, haha. That didn’t change how I read this book and it was still just as enjoyable without that extra knowledge.

Violet and her twin Sebastian were supposed to head to Shelfbrooke Academy together, but he decided to stay behind. She’s never been away from her twin before, so that’s really hard for her. Adding some dorm mixups, her time there isn’t off to a good start! This does give us some laugh out loud moments and I connected with her from the start.

Owen is the popular rugby player and let’s just say Violet notices him from the start. The only problem is that Owen and Lily just broke up. I thought Owen was a very genuine character. Even though he was really caught up with Lily at times, I thought it was understandable as we learn more about him. I am also very happy that the author didn’t turn this into a love triangle. I liked seeing that even with the crushing going on, there was a friendship and Violet was welcomed from the start.

Lily is a special character in my eyes. She doesn’t have the greatest life at home and is struggling with who she is and what she wants. Her journey was my favorite. I loved seeing her find herself and stand up for who she is. That’s definitely not easy at high school, especially when you live with your classmates all the time.

I didn’t agree with Violet pretending to be Sebastian, but I can understand her reasoning in a way. She should’ve never lied like that, but I think Lily needed someone in her corner. That definitely doesn’t make it right, but in some ways it did work out. I do wish Sebastian would’ve come into the story a bit sooner though, because that aspect of the story did take a bit to develop in my opinion.

All in all, this is a cute contemporary and a great start to this series. It’s filled with fun friendships, some laugh out loud moments, cute romance, girl power and I can’t forget the fun references to things that I love like The Vampire Diaries and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I will definitely be waiting for the next book in this series and for what this author does next!

Twelfth Knight was a cute story with fun characters! I definitely enjoyed the start of this series and can’t wait to get my hands on the next one! What’s your favorite retelling?