Snare Your Crush in Three Easy Steps

Berne, Emma Carlson. Snare Your Crush in Three Easy Steps

August 4, 2026 by Choose Your Own Adventure

E ARC provided by Edelweiss Plus

You and your best friend Elise are preparing for the school dance by making cupcakes. When Elise decorates a special one and plans to hide a note in it confessing her crush on the very cute James, you are appalled because he is also YOUR crush, and you had planned on asking him to dance. How will the dance play out? In this Choose Your Own Adventure Book, there are a LOT of different ways! You might sabotage the cupcakes so James doesn’t get her note, you might let Elise go forward with her plan, or a curve ball might be thrown into things when another girl, Sara, is also interested in him! There are some timelines where an overflowing toilet is involved. My favorite is when Elise understands, you get to dance with James, and even get a sweet kiss.

I struggle with this format, especially as an e-book (although it was easy enough to click on the links and go to the correct pages), and want to read every combination. Many of the timelines are very short, and resolve quickly. I can’t imagine the creativity involved in thinking up all of the different combinations of events! I appreciated that the Latin teacher, Mr. B., is also serving as the DJ, and even wearing a t-shirt that reads “Semper Ubi Sub Ubi”, which loosely translates (ungrammatically!) as “Always wear underwear”. I once owned such a t shirt! The illustrations are charming, and reinforce my thought that the girls go to a private school, since they are wearing uniforms.

Romance books have been a big draw for my students this year, so I will buy a copy of this title if it is available in a prebound format. Not entirely sure if my romance readers will like the multiple plot format, but it’s worth a try for fans of Lee Heart Spotlight Sprinkles books or Tessier’s Chloe graphic novels.

Howe, Jenny L. How (Not) to Renovate a Haunted House

July 21, 2026 by Delacorte Romance

E ARC provided by Netgalley

Amity lives in California, where she plans to attend the college where her mother teaches to save on tuition instead of joining her friend Taylor. When her mother gets another job directing the writing center at Rehoth College, Amity is suddenly whisked across the country to Harlow’s Rest, Massachusetts. She’s irritated about the sudden notice and missing a taco crawl with Taylor, although not particularly concerned about leaving her father, from whom her mother was recently divorced. When their new lodgings turn out to be a local haunted house, Amity isn’t happy, even though she has the whole third floor to herself, and cute fledgling podcaster Theo is interested in the house. Amity struggles with social anxiety, but it isn’t long before she is making a few friends and arguing with Theo. Theo’s family is involved in renovating Amity’s house, which has some weird paranormal phenomena going on. Will the two fight their way through the renovations and haunting, or come to a cozy understanding?

I’m always looking for romances with high school characters that would be appealing to middle school students, so I had great hopes for this one, since horror is also a popular genre with my students. There is at least one f-word early on, but this could work for middle school. It wasn’t my favorite, since I am not a fan of the enemies-to-lovers trope, and found Amity’s behavior a bit young for a college student. She is so anxious she will only order food online so she doesn’t have to talk to staff, and muses that “There should be some kind of script available online to guide people through interactions with strangers.” (I thought there probably was; my daughter said that there is, in fact, a Reddit that addresses this, although I didn’t research it further.)

My big objection was the use of the phrase “got smote”, since the mother is supposed to be a college professor of writing. The principal parts of the verb “to smite” are smite, smote, smitten. This is grammatically esoteric, to be sure, but Amity’s mother should have corrected her.

 
Cute story, liked the premise, would probably buy for a high school library, but this wasn’t my favorite. I'm too old, and too Xoomery too appreciate it.