I liked this book a lot, but I didn’t love it as much as I wanted to.

Grace was an extremely relatable character as someone who just graduated and is trying to figure out what’s next. 

All of her struggles with systemic racism and mental illness and family pressure and internal pressure were beautifully written.

I loved the friendships in this book. Grace’s friendship with Raj might have been my favorite, but they were all wonderful in their own ways, and I loved how diverse and complicated the supporting cast was.

I also thought that the open ending was very fitting.

And I really appreciated what the book was saying about stories and self-love and taking space for yourself without forgetting the people around you and their needs. 

Now on to the things I liked less.

While I appreciated that romance wasn’t treated as a cure for Grace’s problems and it wasn’t really the focus of the book, I did not find Grace and Yuki’s relationship compelling at all. Most of Yuki’s dialogue is actually monologues in the form of her radio show, and outside of that, I didn’t feel like I fully grasped who she was as a character, which is weird because the book spends a lot of time with her. I think this was partly because of the occasional time skips and partly because there aren’t enough scenes of Grace and Yuki just hanging out. I felt like I knew Yuki the least well out of all of the characters. I liked her in theory, but she just never fully came into focus for me.

The book is written in present tense, which is fine, but some of the flashbacks were also in present tense, which was a confusing and counterintuitive choice.

I also thought that some of the pacing was sort of off.

But overall, this book was really enjoyable. Grace Porter is a fantastic main character. It’s full of deep, genuine emotions and lovely relationships (the romance notwithstanding), and I highly recommend it.