Kiss, Date, Love, Hate by Luisa Plaja

From Goodreads: 
What if you could change your friends' lives and loves through the settings of a computer game...?

Lex Murphy's group of friends have all dated, hated, ignored and lusted after each other for the last few years. If only there was a way of matching people perfectly to avoid all the unrequited love, dumping and drama! Then Lex's friend George is given a mysterious Sims-like game by his software-testing dad which involves building character profiles in the categories of Life, Looks and Love. Lex and George populate the game with avatars for all their mates, making a few 'wishful thinking' adjustments to the settings - and find that the next day these tinkerings have come true! But how long can this new calm, loved-up atmosphere continue?

Lex and her group of friends are complicated. They have all dated each other, argued, broken up and got back together. When her friend's dad asks them to test a new sim like video game they make avatars of their group of friends with some slight adjustments,they soon discover that all the changes they have made have come true in real life. Question is should they keep the adjustments, or put everyone back to how they were?

I really wasn't sure of Lex at first, I found her to be a little irritating and I wanted to shake her and tell her to stop lusting after Matt, about half way through she really grew on me and I was rooting for her to make the right decision. I originally assumed that Lex was just a bratty teenager at first but as you delve further into the story you find out the reasons for her behaviour. I loved George and thought he was a great sidekick, I really liked his honesty and his protectiveness of Lex even with the strained relationship between their parents.

Drew was a great character and one that I warmed to straight away, I liked that he perceived himself as a bit of a badass and over the course of the story you get to understand the real Drew and see that he has some problems of his own, he also had me laughing out loud at times.

The magical element of the story was very clever, I found it a lot of fun to try and work out if people were acting on instinct or because of the changes made in the game, it definitely got me thinking about what I would change if I ever had the opportunity!

Kiss, Date, Love, Hate was a quick read with a few shocks and surprises along the way, it wasn't the light read I was expecting but I throughly enjoyed it.