✨REVIEW✨

The first time Jay meets Maria, he dismisses the possibility that she might be an intelligent person because she is gorgeous, dressed to the nines, and talking about Taylor Swift. Maria calls him out on it and they become immediate enemies, each venting to their online bestie about the situation. Little do they know, they are each others' faceless online besties and have been texting and flirting via science jokes for over a year. 📚

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HOLD ME is really precious, and also digs into some complicated stuff around gender and sexism. Maria really holds Jay's feet to the fire, both to his face and as Em, the blogger he's in love with. And Jay - after some refusal to engage - does eventually sit with what Maria has explained to him and realizes what a jerk he's been. I thought at first that this was going to be one of these romance novels where the intial hate is too strong to believably overcome, but the nuanced way the two leads talk (okay, mostly argue) through it felt pretty real. 📚

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In addition to all this, Maria is a trans woman, which plays into her refusal to back down from being the hyperfeminine woman she loves to be. And while this fact about Maria is an integral part of who she is, it's a total nonissue in her relationship with Jay and I loved that. There is a scene where she comes out to him, and he simply absorbs the fact and realizes why this compounds the pain of his actions. It's not framed as though anyone was hiding anything or felt betrayed - it's just another fact about her life. 📚

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Content warnings: transphobia, sexism, racism.