I'm not entirely sure if the secondhand embarrassment to adorable ratio was entirely correct in this book. Or, rather, that it IS but the deck is stacked towards the front and there were a number of moments where I just put the book down and was like "nope, not dealing with these nudniks".
Which, I mean, bug or feature is in the eye of the beholder and it's always difficult to pinpoint the line between "aww" and "ugh" because readers are fickle beasties.
And basically the book, as a reading experience, definitely got better after the first third. And one of the things this book does really well is "falling in love is no substitute for therapy" and I really appreciate that.
And there are moments when this book feels like the author read that post (Reddit or Tumblr, I can't remember) about the difference between ask culture and guess culture and thought "what if that but gay".