Christina's Reviews > Romancing the Nerd

My original review of this title can be found here on The Book Hookup.

**Disclaimer:** An eARC of these title was provided by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. However, that did not influence this review in any way. All thoughts, quotes, and opinions will be of this version and not of the published edition.

♥ Quick Thoughts and Rating: 4 stars! Romancing the Nerd was a perfect companion novel to The Summer I Became a Nerd where we first met Dan. This novel was delightful in all its geek glory, and while parts of it were a tad on the predictable side, it was still so much fun! Ms. Miller gets adorkable just right every single time.

♥ The Lowdown: Our beloved Dan The Man got hit with the puberty stick pretty hard. He’s shot up quite a few inches, slimmed down, muscled up, and taken up basketball to make his dad happy. All that new Dan thrusts him straight into popularity and along the way to pool parties and fluttering lashes from the cheerleaders, he thinks he might have lost his chance at one of the coolest uncool girl he’s ever known, Zelda.

Zelda is a fangirl and all-around nerd, proud of it too. Back in the day, she used to think she had a thing for her then best friend, Dan, until he kissed it all away with popularity and became the biggest jerk ever. But that’s alright, Zelda is smart, and she’s hatched a plan to get back at Dan and to uncover truth of how popularity changes people.

Only, in this plan to discover the truth and learn about the “new Dan,” Zelda quickly discovers that perhaps she was quick with her own assumptions and maybe Dan isn’t so bad after all. In fact, maybe Zelda has fallen for him all over again.


♥ Review: This novel was just really damn cute! I loved getting to see some of the characters from The Summer I Became a Nerd, but even in my review for that, I expressed my great hope for getting Dan’s story. Part of me was a little sad that in Dan’s great tale of awesome, he had to grow up and become super popular to get his story, but in the end, I think I found that it worked for him in some weird way. Even still, I feel like all the amazingly nerd-core parts of him that I absolutely adored and made me fall in love with his character in the original book were only sprinkled sparingly throughout in this book. I missed those parts of him and got really giddy when he rebelled from his dad and let his geek flag fly. Now, for the object of his nerd affection: I really loved Zelda. She was funny and smart, a total klutz (something I can empathize with), and she’s a super fangirl after my own heart. As this is told in dual POV, I feel like we really get in the heads of both characters. They had great “voices” and I appreciated the character growth each character underwent during the course of this book.

I can’t say it enough: this novel was cute cute cute! There is more LARP-ing, plenty of nerdtastic pop culture references, and a few hardcore geek swoons. My little nerd girl heart squee’ed and flailed on many parts, to be honest. Well, that is when I wasn’t snorting or choking back my laughter.

♥ Teaser Quote: He may have quoted Shakespeare to her, and in context of that particular moment, it was perfect.

He smiles and offers me his arm. When I take it, he whispers, “Hear my soul speak. Of the very instant that I saw you, did my heart fly at your service.”
~quote taken from the eARC of Romancing the Nerd at 98%

♥ Rec It? Yes! If you loved The Summer I Became the Nerd then you’ll definitely want to check out this one. It was all sorts of adorkable awesomeness. Ms. Miller knows how to make my geek girl heart glow, and if she’s writing more stories, I’ll definitely be reading them.

♥ A very special thanks to Entangled: Teen and NetGalley for providing me with an advanced copy of this title in exchange for my honest review.