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Perfect on Paper by Sophie Gonzales
3.0

Overall, while I really wanted to enjoy this book, it just wasn't really my thing. While the concept itself was interesting, and I like the bi rep and other queer rep we had in this book, I didn't care for the MC much at all, and it ruined my reading experience a bit.

Darcy gives anonymous love advice to her classmates, but it all goes wrong when things start to come out and her identity is revealed. While I did think Darcy was giving good advice, there were definitely some good points brought up about her qualifications/possible negative impact she could be having on romantic relationships that made for an interesting discussion. These were very present in the story, yet I don't think they led to a satisfying ending necessarily, since Darcy just sort of claimed she learned from the experience and would do a better job with her online blog. My biggest issue wasn't with this though, I mainly was just frustrated early on with how Darcy acted and sometimes abused her advice system, and I had a hard time forgiving her. On the other hand, I also had a hard time forgiving her best friend for some of the shitty things she did too, especially when she suddenly got a new girlfriend and they both treated Darcy pretty badly. It just overall was uncomfortable to read and I don't think it was resolved well enough for me to fully like either character again.

I did think the main romance of this story was cute though, and I really liked that this story dived into bisexual women dating men and how some parts of the LGBTQ+ community see them as less queer when they're in a straight-passing relationship. It's an important conversation, and I was glad this book featured it so strongly.

Overall, I don't think this book has necessarily put me off other books by Sophie Gonzales, since I do like what she was trying to accomplish here and really like the representation, but this particular book just didn't quite work for me.