Publication Date: July 25, 2023
New Yorker Molly Blum knows everything about her lifelong nemesis, Jude Stark. With their families so close, they should have been best friends. Instead, she thinks he’s a too-charming slacker, and he thinks she’s allergic to fun. After years of one-upping each other’s pranks (chocolate-dipped cat treats are not as delicious as they appear), one high school joke went too far, and they stopped speaking completely. But now that they’re supposed to help plan a massive party for their parents—together—there’s no better time to resume their war.
And it is on. Only somewhere between all the sniping and harmless hijinks, a reluctant friendship develops, along with an unexpected spark of sexual tension. It might have to do with the fact that she’s been dating Jude-lookalikes and he’s been dating Molly doppelgangers. Or the fact that neither of them is nearly as horrible as they thought. All Molly and Jude know is that they’ve mastered the art of hating each other. Falling in love, on the other hand, is a whole new battlefield.
A total charmer! Someone Just Like You by Meredith Schorr has the type of plot that makes you smile and one you can’t wait to get back to if you should ever have to put it down. Powerful scene building and equally strong characters bring this fun and unique plot vividly alive, easily drawing the reader into the New York life of these adorable rival twenty-somethings.
The Blum and Stark families have been neighbors and best friends for as long as the three offspring from each family can remember. With each couple having a notable wedding anniversary coming up, the six children decide to throw a combined surprise anniversary party. That’s great, except Molly Blum and Jude Stark, the two youngest members of each family, are tasked with finding the perfect venue. It should be easy, but that means—working together. That usually doesn’t go over too well when the two have been rivals, pranksters, and in competition with each other from the time they were toddlers.
The job must be done, so they start out where they left off, pranking each other, but as time goes by and Molly and Jude are thrown together on a regular basis, things start to change. They both discover they’ve been dating doppelgangers of each other—same look, same jobs—even the same pets. Is it possible they’ve actually been looking for each other all this time? Molly is horrified—she can’t be falling for Jude. And as for Jude, well, the reader knows something he doesn’t, so while you want to get irritated with him for the pranks he pulls on Molly, you’re also in his corner. Will the secret Molly is hiding or their tumultuous growing up prove to be too much to overcome for them to realize true love?
Someone Just Like You is a fun read with lively, interesting, and compelling characters. While the story is told entirely from Molly’s perspective, leaving you to wonder what Jude is thinking, Meredith Schorr has done a masterful job of bringing both Molly and Jude powerfully to life, carrying the reader into their present-day world as well as their world as they grew up. A great story in every way except for heavy usage of one expletive, which proved to be distracting.
Someone Just Like You is a fun and entertaining read that will have you chuckling at Molly and Jude’s pranks and cheering them on as they come to realize that the other might just be what they’ve been looking for and has been right in front of them all along.
A born and bred New Yorker and lifelong daydreamer, Meredith Schorr fueled her passion for writing everything from restaurant reviews, original birthday cards, and even work-related emails into a career penning romantic comedies. When she’s not writing books filled with grand gestures and hard-earned happily-ever-afters or working as a trademark paralegal, she’s most often reading, running, or watching TV…for research, of course.
