Courtesy of Cupid

Jones, Nashae. Courtesy of Cupid
January 2, 2024 by Aladdin

E ARC provided by Edelweiss Plus

Erin Johnson has a PLAN. She is going to do well in school and eventually grow up and find a cure for the colon cancer that killed her grandmother. It hasn't been easy; her mother is a romance novelist who ghostwrites for clients, her father has never been in the picture, and she's one of the few Black kids in her school. Luckily, she has a good friend, Bruno, whose mother is good friends with her mother, but Bruno's twin, Ben, now is horrible to her. As the new school year starts, Erin has big plans. She is in honors English, and presents her teacher with a copy of a Shakespeare book she thinks that her teacher will like, only to be outdone by her rival, Trevor Jin, whose father has scored free tickets to a production the teacher has always wanted to see. Even worse, she is paired with Trevor for a science project. Trevor has been her nemesis since kindergarten, when he appropriated her story of what she did during the summer, and has ben her academic rival. Now, he's even running for the president of the Multicultural Leadership Club, which she desperately wants to win. When Erin's mother surprises her with a birthday party for her 13th birthday, to which she had the evil Ben invite people, Trevor comes, and is there when her mother starts to read a book she has just submitted, in which the main love interests are called Erin and Trevor! It's mortifying, but even more mortifying is the fact that... Trevor is kind of cute. The next day, some strange things happen to Erin, and when she gets home, her mother informs her that her father was actually Cupid. As in, the god Cupid! Erin has the ability to make people fall in love, and has already magically intwined her friend Bruno and his crush India as well as two of her teachers and the caretakers at the cemetery where she visits her grandmother's grave! 

Strengths: Erin starts out the book with the right idea: Love is kind of useless. Of course, since this is a romance book, she changes her mind all too quickly! It is good that she still has her STEM aspirations and wants to go to Howard University and Johns Hopkins. I wish more of my students had goals. Trevor isn't a horrible person; it's just Erin's view of him. Many of the things he has done that irritated Erin were motivated by the fact that his parents, whom Erin admires, are so busy as doctors that they don't have a lot of time for him. While this feels, in some respects, like a young adult work, it is paced much more quickly, the characters are generally nicer to each other, and the book is not overly long.  It's easy to suspend disbelief about Erin's father being Cupid. The cover makes it very clear that this is a romance, and I think that readers who enjoy Suzanne Nelson's WISH books will be quick to pick this title up.

Weaknesses: The Multicultural Leadership Club presidential campaign is run in a similar was to class president campaigns in middle grade books. In 25 years of teaching, I've never seen any kind of campaign like this. Erin has really good ideas, but I'm not sure they would be practical for schools to carry out. I wish there had been a little more mythology and more of Erin's powers on display!
What I really think: I'm not a fan of the enemies-to-lovers trope; if I hate you, I will hate you FOREVER. There are not a lot of instances of this in middle grade books, which tend to have a rosier and less complicated view of romance, which I prefer. I'm not quite sure how my students feel about this. Middle grade appropriate romances are always in demand, so I'll purchase a copy.