well..... what can i say.......
umm...... i liked the gay people!
hooray for the gays!
im gonna be real, this book was a hard read. like not in a "i purchased this 4 years ago as a tween and now as an adult its cringe" read, but a "oh my god what is this writing, what is this plot, what is this book."
this book is a jumbled mess.
i would say there is only an overarching plot like. with a hundred pages left. other than that, they were just side plots, but there were like 50 of them and i could barely keep track. speaking of barely keeping track, i couldn't keep track of the many different characters. like i still couldn't tell you who that random lady with red hair is from adie's chapters. or which family is sophie from and which family is summer from.
the "plot twists", if you could call them that, were predictable and fell flat. like that whole plot line with adie and the fires..... like be so fr. who adie's mum is? be so fr.
and then the "LGBT+" tag. lets be honest. gay people are only mentioned off-hand as one of the main characters parents, and LITERALLY ON THE LAST FUCKING PAGE DO YOU GET A GAY KISS. i bought this book expecting heartstopper and i just got queerbaited /lh
also what the fuck was the whole thing about emily dickinson!??!?!!?!? like i read ‘the moonlight dreamers recently and there was this whole thing about oscar wilde. ok! but like. IT HAD SIGNIFICANCE!!!!! the only significance of dickinson here was that juliet likes to post her quotes to her instagram??? like im sorry you had me here thinking emily dickinson was gonna be like. something a lot more important than it was. why was it not more important.
now..... the writing.
holy fuck was it..... Unique.
i literally had to text alastair because there was an entire paragraph dedicated to a fucking minecraft quote. like ok i get the character who said it is autistic (w for gale!!!) and his special interest is minecraft but what in the fuck was that? tbh it was mainly milo i cringed at, which is even funnier when you realise im autistic, so its not that i find autistic people cringey, i just find the writing cringey <3
ummmmmm positives are a canonical autistic character who actually stims and does something other than be a walking trope (but at times he does fall into this trap, L for milo), i really liked hari........ um.............. that's kind of it
im trying not to DNF books but honestly if i wasn't insane i would've stopped reading this at about page 100. like this wasn't even a hate read, this was just a goof read. this book was comical to me. this was like watching a comedy show for me.