Courtesy of Cupid
Nashae Jones
Aladdin
Published January 2, 2023

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About Courtesy of Cupid

In this middle grade rom-com sprinkled with a dash of magic, a girl uses her newfound ability to make people fall in love to sabotage her rival.

Erin Johnson’s thirteenth birthday unfolds like any other day, from her mom’s quirky and embarrassing choice of outfit to racing her nemesis, Trevor Jin, to the best seat in class—front row, center. But her gifts this year include something very out of the magical powers.

Erin discovers her mysterious father is actually the love god Cupid, and she’s inherited his knack for romance. It’s not the most useful ability for an overachiever with lofty academic and extracurricular goals…or is it? Erin desperately wants to be elected president of the Multicultural Leadership Club, and as usual, Trevor is her fiercest competition. He’s never backed down from a challenge before, but if Erin makes him fall in love with her, maybe he’d drop out of the race and let her win.

With her magical pedigree, wrapping Trevor around her finger is a snap, and having him around all the time is a small price to pay for victory. But without their cutthroat rivalry bringing out the worst in each other, Erin realizes Trevor may not be as bad as she thought, and suddenly, her first foray into love gets a lot more complicated…

My Review

I feel like this book is what would happen if you took the first Percy Jackson book and made it a romantic comedy. (Okay, there’s no special camp or anything, but hopefully, the idea still makes sense.)

The characters in the book are great in terms of being very different from one another and easy to keep track of because of that. I didn’t get anyone mixed up, even though there are a lot of named side characters, and I’m prone to mixups. I also really liked the relationship between Trevor and Erin. The rivalry made sense from Erin’s perspective, but knowing what was happening on Trevor’s side made sense, too.

Because this is a middle grade romance, the love parts of it stay in the land of very sweet. Characters hug or hold hands. There’s lots of blushing and hearts going pitter-patter, which just felt adorable.

The wrapup might have happened just a tad too simply, but on the whole, I felt like the book was very true to its rom-com flavor and definitely ended with lots of grins and good feelings. I enjoyed this one a lot, and I’m looking forward to the next book by this author.

Content Notes

Recommended for Ages 10 up.

Representation
Erin is Black. Trevor is Korean American. Bruno and Ben, twins who are Erin’s close friends, are Latine. Ben and Bruno have two moms. Two minor characters, both men, commit to a romantic relationship.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
None.

Romance/Sexual Content
Obvious attraction between characters culminates in holding hands or hugging, or, in one instance, a marriage proposal.

Spiritual Content
Erin learns her dad is a god, specifically Cupid. No commentary on the existence of other gods or how Cupid’s existence fits into any larger pantheon.

Violent Content
Ben makes mean comments to his brother and does some manipulative things to try to hurt him or Erin. Erin tries to use her Cupid power to control others and faces consequences for it.

Drug Content
None.

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Marvelous Middle-Grade Mondays

I’m sharing this post as a part of a weekly round-up of middle-grade posts called Marvelous Middle-Grade Mondays. Check out other blogs posting about middle-grade books today on Marvelous Middle-Grade Mondays at Always in the Middle with Greg Pattridge.