Lou’s Review: My Own Worst Enemy, by Lily Lindon

Warning: this review contains major spoilers. Please read My Own Worst Enemy first. Or don’t – I’m not your mother or your English teacher.

Lily Lindon’s debut novel is one of the most original and entertaining books I’ve read in 2024. Though it was also frustrating, because Double Booked got marketed as romantic comedy when it doesn’t meet the basic genre requirements of romance: a complete central love story ending with a Happily Ever After, or at least Happy For Now. Still, Lindon’s talent and promise as a writer shone through every page. So I knew I had to pick up her latest release, My Own Worst Enemy. And it is indeed romance!

Emmy Clooney (no relation) takes great pride in her work as an actor. Shakespeare is her passion – and she has a first-class acting degree to prove it. Though Emmy’s career is just starting to take off, there are few roles for butch women. So Emmy’s heart sinks when she starts bumping into Mae at auditions; not only is Mae better looking than Emmy, but she has sparkling confidence and a gift for spontaneity. As the competition heats up, Emmy can’t get Mae out of her head. And when they’re cast together in a gender-bending Shakespeare reimagining, these rivals must learn how to co-operate, or risk tanking what could be Emmy’s long-awaited big break.

My Own Worst Enemy does live up to the full genre promise of romance. It’s charming, entertaining, and laugh-out-loud funny. I think Lindon is shaping up to be one of the greatest rom-com writers of this generation, with an unfailing knack for landing wordplay and situational irony. Plus, the chemistry between Emmy and Mae is intense. For all their outward similarities, inwardly they’re opposites, and there’s an irresistible magnetism between them.

That said, I have two major problems with this story. The first is that, while neurodivergence is never mentioned in relation to her, Emmy has many traits strongly associated with autism. That’s not necessarily a bad thing – Emmy is a wonderful protagonist, and very lovable. Plus, her characterisation rings with truth.

Emmy loves acting because every character’s lines and responses are pre-written, and struggles with social interaction in real life because she has no script to work with. Emmy has difficulty with social cues – in fact, her whole rivalry with Mae kicks off because she’s blunt to the point of offensive without realising how her words might land. Emmy loves routine and order, and learns everything she possibly can about her special interest: theatre. She even infodumps about the Bard in an attempt to bond with her fellow actors.

Throughout the novel, there are persistent signs that Emmy is autistic. Unfortunately, it ends with coding – if Emmy’s diagnosis were official, I’d have been thrilled with this representation. But the way other characters – particularly Emmy’s love interest – respond to an autistic-coded character is deeply troubling.

Mae knows from the beginning that Emmy struggles in social settings, especially with groups, yet goes out of her way to alienate Emmy from their castmates. And she’s vicious about Emmy’s social anxiety, saying: “Isolate yourself. Let the rest of the cast learn to hate you as much as I do.” Mae also mocks Emmy for preferring interactions to be pre-scripted, judging Emmy for acting with her head rather than her heart. She’s cutting here too, claiming to be able to do anything Emmy can better. While sparks fly due to the rivalry, so much of this central relationship feels toxic owing to Mae’s behaviour.

Mae steals Emmy’s lunch, acting more like a school bully than a love interest. She steals Emmy’s notes and takes credit for her ideas with their director, using the resulting clout to get most of Emmy’s scenes cut from the play. Worst of all, Mae steals Emmy’s CV, appropriating Emmy’s education on her profile, landing roles that should have gone to Emmy through these pilfered qualifications. Mae never studied acting, because she only decided to embark on this career a week before bumping into Emmy at an audition. And it’s not as if Mae’s an underdog who needs this boost – all the while Mae has been lying about her identity, claiming to have been randomly scouted, when she’s really the daughter of a celebrated actress.

Nepo Baby Mae is never held accountable for her deception, or the harm her lies have done to Emmy’s career. And Emmy doesn’t have an internationally famous mum to fall back on – she’s working at her dad’s pizza restaurant to make ends meet. Narratively, Mae’s dishonesty is framed as all being fair in love and war; part and parcel of a passionate rivalry. But none of Emmy’s pranks come close to matching the damage Mae inflicts.

Jean-Ralphio in Parks and Recreation, Season 5, Episode 16

Given the rarity of Butch4Butch romances, I was ready to root for this couple. But as love interests go, to quote Jean-Ralphio Saperstein, Mae “is the wooooooorst.” Her cruelty and entitlement do real damage to Emmy’s life. It didn’t feel like Enemies to Lovers so much as a spoiled mean girl used to taking whatever she wants.

Yes, My Own Worst Enemy is funny. And Mae can be charming. But I found it impossible to root for Emmy and Mae as a couple, especially given that Mae shows no sign of coming clean publicly or trying to make amends. If she’d grown as a character and owned up to it, perhaps I’d feel differently. But there’s no redemption arc here. Which is such a shame, because butch characters are massively underrepresented in sapphic romance. Seeing two masc-of-centre women building a healthy relationship would have been wonderful. Yet by the end I was praying Emmy would realise she deserves better.