You Started It

By: Jackie Khalilieh

Published by Penguin Group, 2026-06-02

Better Than the Movies meets Olivia Rodrigo's Sour in a YA romance novel from Something More author, Jackie Khalilieh — now available in paperback!

Seventeen-year-old Jamie Taher-Foster has big plans for senior year. She's made a list of things and places in Toronto she and her boyfriend of three years, Ben Cameron, need to check off before graduating. And the biggest plan of all: a very special night for the two of them at the upcoming Winter Formal. But then Ben arrives back home after a summer away with an unthinkable announcement: he wants to break up.

And when Jamie discovers him with Olivia Chen the next day, she is determined to get him back. Even if that means fake dating the younger, curly-haired, TikTok dancer Axel Dahini, whose bicycle she accidentally ran over.

Though she and Axel have nothing in common aside from their shared Arab heritage — she's a messy, type A with anxiety; he's carefree but meticulous — their forced time together brings them to better understand one another. And for Jamie, it just might mean learning that not all experiences or people need to be crossed off a list.