As If on Cue, by Marisa Kanter, follows Natalie, who, along with her best friend Henry, has written a play over the summer that’s basically just a rip-off of Frozen (titled Melted). Like, from what I could tell the plot was essentially the same (the two main characters were even named Adina and Emma), just with flipped powers and a slight message about climate change at the end. They wrote the play to attempt to save the drama club after a large budget cut to the arts programs, offering it as a low-cost option. When this is shut down, they find out that none of the art clubs will have any funding at the school whatsoever with the exception of band, which, (with the Natalie’s dad as the director), is good enough that it brings the school enough prestige to allow it to keep running. Seeing this as unfair (because it is), Natalie and Henry band together with all of the other art groups at the school to attempt to create a proposal for for the school board for Melted to be put on (combined with an art auction and some other things).
Meanwhile, Natalie and Reid have long been childhood rivals, and a prank war between them escalates to Reid being made co-director of Melted as a punishment, and the play being turned into a musical (featuring such songs as “Keep it In,” “Love is a Closed Window,” and “In Winter.” Seriously, how they could sell tickets to this without a copyright lawsuit is beyond me. Like, they aren’t doing a parody; they’re just doing Definitely-Not-Frozen). Cue the enemies-to-lovers plot.
Natalie and Reid’s relationship is definitely more interesting than either of them as characters. I won’t get into much of it, because part of the fun of the book is the various flashbacks that gradually reveal how they came to be the enemies they are at the start of the book, but the majority of the reason for it is rivalry over Natalie’s dad’s attention. Seeing how they got to that point while simultaneously seeing them move on and forgive each other and begin to really see each other for the first time is definitely the strongest aspect of the book. The romance and banter are also adorable (I do love a good enemies-to-lovers story).
Natalie was definitely likable, if a little boring. Her main trait is convincing herself art-is-great-but-not-a-sustainable-career over and over again. She also is just too suspicious of Reid, especially after they’ve started dating, and she does some things that are just objectively horrible. On the other hand, I didn’t like Reid at all; he really is just a jerk at the start, and then they try and make it seem like he was just misunderstood without trying to justify or offer any evidence for that. Like, Natalie might be an unreliable narrator, but she couldn’t possibly be THAT unreliable. I definitely appreciated Reid more for the recouncilation arc between him and Natalie than for himself as a character.
My issue with the entire musical plot is that it’s just a little absurd. It kind of just felt like the author didn’t want to have to come up with her own musical plot, so she just had them steal Frozen instead. I really just couldn’t get behind the concept, and it’s hard for me to see Natalie as a talented playwright (like we’re supposed to) when she basically just writes Frozen fanfic and acts like it was a brand new concept. I’m sure dozens of people have written that fanfiction story. It just isn’t her own plot, and then they replace a lot of her writing with songs, so it just kind of loses the point.
Independently of the actual musical, I did enjoy the art-clubs-banding-together-to-make-a-stand-against-the-budget-cuts plot. I’m always a fan of that sort of thing, and I, as a theater kid, always love reading books about other theater kids, so those were both very appealing parts of the story to me.
My thoughts on the side characters vary. I honestly cared more about Natalie’s sister, Delia, than anything else in the book. She’s preparing for her bat mitzvah throughout the book and having a lot of friendship issues. She’s probably the most likable character in the story to be honest. I also loved Natalie’s friend Fitz, who does have a cute queer storyline (even though I didn’t like her girlfriend, Danica, whatsoever, I can still appreciate the wlw representation). Henry annoyed me; the author attempted to give him some amount of depth, but he kind of just distracts from the rest of the story. I think the issue is that she tries to cram too much development in for him in too short an amount of page-time, so the scenes that he is in just feel out of place. Natalie’s relationships with her parents are also interesting; I wish there’d been a little more time dedicated to them, but I did enjoy those aspects of the book as they are.
Overall, I did really enjoy As If on Cue. Even though the musical annoyed me, as did the two main characters, the romance is very well-developed and adorable and makes everything else worth it. I’d definitely recommend it if you even remotely like the trope, if you are/were a theater kid, or if you just want a cute contemporary romance. I’m giving it four stars.
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