Highly Suspicious and Unfairly Cute Review: More Than Winning

Talia Hibbert’s Highly Suspicious and Unfairly Cute makes academic rivalry feel like an argument about whose judgment deserves to govern a young person’s life. Celine Bangura and Bradley Graeme can compete, insult and impress. What they find harder is allowing someone else to know what they actually want. The romance works best when reconnection gives them a place to stop performing certainty.

Full spoilers ahead: this review discusses the friendship’s repair, the scholarship outcome and the romantic ending. Published originally on January 3, 2023, this is a Black British YA contemporary romance with a bisexual male lead, OCD representation, parental abandonment, kissing and strong language. It is a closed-door romance, not one of Hibbert’s sexually explicit adult novels. The analysis uses an authorized opening excerpt, the author’s interview and independent criticism rather than claiming completed firsthand reading or listening.

The publisher verifies the original date and New York Times bestseller designation. Those details support its place in a recent, popular external-book selection. The more useful reason to examine it is the particular shape of its happy ending: romance and ambition do not resolve by making both protagonists win the same thing.

The rivals remember more than they admit

Celine and Brad were once close friends. Their estrangement has become academic competition and verbal hostility by their final school year. A wilderness enrichment program with university scholarships brings them into proximity again. Working together requires them to reassess a relationship they have each explained to themselves through hurt.

The childhood history gives their exchanges a different weight from a rivalry between strangers. An insult can draw on knowledge acquired before either had much protection against it. Equally, an act of kindness can reach a part of the other person that newer friends may not know exists.

That makes the romance’s first challenge reparative. Attraction cannot simply reveal that the hostility was secretly flirtation all along. Some of it comes from real injury and choices that need acknowledgement. Calling the novel enemies-to-lovers describes a trajectory, but friends-to-rivals-to-lovers better captures the responsibility underneath it.

Alicia at A Kernel of Nonsense particularly values that the falling-out involves substantive issues rather than only miscommunication. That is her critical emphasis. It helps distinguish the novel’s emotional work from a story in which one corrected fact makes years of hurt disappear.

A convincing repair must change how each treats the other, not merely establish who remembers the original quarrel most accurately. The question is whether knowledge becomes a tool for care after having been used as ammunition.

Celine’s voice has an ethical edge

The authorized first chapter on Random House Children’s Books introduces Celine through social irritation, her online following and her admiration for lawyer Katharine Breakspeare. Her voice is impatient and comic, but it is not indiscriminately cynical.

Her interest in strange stories includes limits. She distinguishes imaginative speculation from treating another person’s tragic death as entertainment. That early distinction complicates the shorthand of a conspiracy-obsessed heroine. Curiosity and skepticism do not have to make her careless about people.

Her response to coverage of Katharine’s appearance similarly shows what she values. She wants a woman’s accomplishments to receive more attention than her styling. Her ambition carries both admiration and anger: she has an image of professional possibility, and she notices how easily others trivialize it.

The humor is therefore doing character work. Celine’s sharpness does more than announce that she is difficult. It reveals a person who makes judgments quickly because she has already thought about what deserves respect. The romantic challenge is not to remove that judgment. It is to let her use it without treating every intimate uncertainty as a threat.

Some readers may tire of the defensive delivery. That is a meaningful response to a strongly voiced protagonist, rather than proof that the heroine requires softening. The craft test concerns variation: can the narration show the difference between righteous impatience, ordinary irritation and fear masquerading as certainty?

Ambition has an audience

Celine’s scholarship goal is entangled with her estranged father and the wish to prove something to him. Her aspiration is real, but its emotional audience complicates it. An accomplishment meant to answer abandonment can never guarantee the answer she wants.

The problem is not that a teenager should be free of resentment before choosing a career. That would ask for implausible maturity. The more interesting question is how she notices the difference between pursuing an opportunity and staging a verdict on her own worth.

Her family relationships prevent the father from becoming the only person who matters. The mother and sister who remain present are part of the novel’s emotional world. A romance that includes them can show how the attention of an absent person eclipses support that is already available.

In Rebecca Mills’s interview with Hibbert, the author describes wanting Celine’s self-worth to separate from others’ expectations. That authorial intention does not automatically establish the effect of every scene. It does clarify why the ending need not deliver the exact triumph Celine imagines at the beginning.

The romance becomes useful when Brad helps make a different audience imaginable: someone interested in her feelings rather than only her outcome. He should not become the replacement authority whose approval she now chases. The better possibility is that being known helps her hear herself.

Brad’s confidence is not the whole story

Brad’s social success contrasts with Celine’s guardedness, but it does not make him emotionally uncomplicated. His OCD and his interest in writing sit alongside the appearance of an accomplished student and football player. The dual perspective allows the reader to see what a popular exterior can conceal.

Publishers Weekly connects the outdoor competition to the pressures both characters face, including Brad’s mental health. Kirkus likewise emphasizes vulnerability within the romantic exchanges. These critiques support a reading of the novel’s tenderness as attentiveness to specific difficulty, rather than generic praise of a nice boy.

Brad’s uncertainty about his future also provides an important parallel. He is not simply present to diagnose Celine’s defensive habits. He needs to say what he wants instead of following a path that appears expected of him.

The wish to write is especially telling beside academic success. Achievement can make a teenager’s preferences less audible because adults already have a story about where that achievement should lead. A good student may feel permitted to choose only options that maintain the existing story.

The relationship offers both protagonists a chance to revise such narratives. Celine can learn that a changed plan is not humiliation. Brad can learn that disclosure of a different ambition need not be a declaration of failure.

Representation includes ordinary support

Hibbert’s interview discusses drawing on her own experience of OCD while stressing that Brad’s journey is not identical to hers. That distinction matters. A fictional character should not have to represent every person with a condition to have a specific, meaningful experience.

The novel includes support beyond romance. Mills’s review at Culturess notes family, friends and therapy in Brad’s life. His relationship with Celine therefore joins a network rather than replacing it.

That is a valuable structural choice. Love can make it easier to explain a need, but it does not become treatment or proof that symptoms should disappear. A supportive partner is allowed to matter without receiving credit for curing another person.

Brad’s bisexuality also belongs to his characterization without making the central relationship less valid. His attraction to Celine does not erase the identity established elsewhere in his life. The author’s interview frames that ease as a deliberate imaginative possibility.

These elements enrich the romance because they affect how people understand and support each other. They are not merely labels added outside the story. The distinction between social confidence and private difficulty gives Brad an interior life Celine must learn to encounter more generously.

The outdoors changes the terms of competence

The wilderness program gives the protagonists practical reasons to cooperate. Academic excellence cannot perform every task for them, and verbal agility cannot prevent every uncomfortable moment. A different setting makes familiar roles less secure.

The premise also creates a productive tension between competition and intimacy. A scholarship has material value; wanting it is not a shallow distraction from love. The book can therefore ask when cooperation helps ambition and when rivalry prevents people from recognizing help.

Its comic potential comes from highly capable teens encountering situations they cannot entirely control. Yet comedy has to preserve the legitimacy of their stakes. If the expedition became only a stage for romantic teasing, the pressure surrounding university would lose its force.

The strongest version of this setup lets a practical task expose an emotional habit. Someone who insists on being right may need to listen. Someone who hides a preference may need to make a decision aloud. Cooperation then becomes evidence of change rather than an arbitrary route to physical proximity.

Repair needs enough time to become believable

Mills’s Culturess review has reservations about chapter length and the late placement of the third-act conflict, particularly the time available to work through it. Those are distinctive observations credited to that review. They point toward the novel’s most useful possible improvement.

A further scene of repair before the public resolution could show the couple establishing how they will respond to fear next time. Acknowledging affection is one thing; recognizing a defensive impulse before it becomes an attack is another.

Such a scene need not make these teenagers unusually wise. An awkward, incomplete attempt would be appropriate. The value would lie in showing that they can pause, apologize or ask a question without immediately reaching for the old competitive script.

The sharp banter creates much of the book’s energy, but sustained tenderness needs a different rhythm as well. If every feeling arrives through a joke, vulnerability can seem like another contest. Space for an unpolished conversation would make the polished wit more meaningful by contrast.

These are improvements to duration and texture, rather than demands for a darker book. The novel’s optimistic intention is clear. The question is how much ordinary evidence the reader receives for that optimism.

A happy ending with different rewards

The SuperSummary plot account confirms that Brad receives a scholarship, while Celine receives an internship opportunity with Katharine rather than winning one herself. They declare their feelings and choose the relationship. Hibbert’s interview independently explains Celine’s ending as a release from a single prescribed route to success.

The unequal rewards are the most interesting part of that resolution. The book refuses to make romantic equality depend on matching institutional recognition. Celine’s worth does not shrink because she fails to receive the exact award she sought.

The internship also changes the nature of opportunity. Rather than a trophy to display to an absent parent, it can become experience through which she discovers what she actually wants. It is a beginning, which suits a YA ending better than a complete map of adulthood.

The romantic commitment remains appropriately open toward that adulthood. These are young people choosing to risk being known, not characters whose every future difficulty has been removed. Hope rests on their increased willingness to speak and listen.

Reader fit

This novel suits readers who enjoy sharp YA voices, rekindled friendship, academic pressure and a tender romance involving imperfect teens. Its Black British setting, bisexual representation and mental-health support are integral reasons to consider it, alongside the outdoor comedy.

Readers seeking Hibbert’s adult sexual explicitness should choose with the audience distinction in mind. Readers who prefer quieter narration or a longer period of reconciliation may find the banter and late conflict less satisfying. Parental abandonment and OCD are substantial emotional content even within a warm romantic comedy.

The book’s strongest promise is that a person can be loved without having every plan approved or every defense admired. Celine and Brad do not need to become less ambitious. They need ambition to stop functioning as a substitute for saying what hurts and what they hope for.

Sources and editorial basis

The Penguin Random House page verifies January 3, 2023 publication and linked bestseller evidence. Random House Children’s Books provides the authorized first chapter. Hibbert’s Culturess interview supplies author testimony about characterization, OCD, bisexuality and the ending.

Independent critiques are Publishers Weekly, Kirkus, Culturess and A Kernel of Nonsense. Outcome details were checked against SuperSummary. The closed-door label is corroborated by The StoryGraph’s reader review. This is original criticism based on an authorized excerpt, author testimony and cited reviews, with distinctive critical arguments attributed. It does not claim completed firsthand reading or listening, and it does not imply this external book is in the HoneyBooks catalog.