I struggled with figuring out what I was going to rate this book. Most of the time, I felt like it was a three-star read, but then something would happen that would hit my emotions in a way I just wasn't expecting. If partial stars were a thing on GR, I would probably rate this between a 3.5 and a 3.75, so I just decided to round up to a four.

I didn't know at all what to expect from this book. I guess I thought there would be more of a romance between the two main characters, but that is just a very small part of this story.

I loved the friendship between the characters. Not only Laurie and Sarah, but also Laurie and Jack and ultimately Sarah and Jack. Even when Jack loses his way in the middle of the book, Laurie is there for him and I love that they obviously have strong feelings for each other aside from a romantic connection.

Aside from the initial premise of a girl finding out a boy she fell in love with at first sight is dating her best friend, most of this felt very genuine. They were relatively decent people, flaws and all. This didn't follow the same sort of tropes that other books like this do. There wasn't a 'bad guy' in the bunch. That actually made for a much more bittersweet tone than I was expecting. When a relationship didn't work out, even when it opened up the possibility for our two protagonists to be together, I wasn't excited about it. I didn't root for the relationships to end, with the exception of

Jack's relationship with Amanda. Ultimatums are never a good beginning to a relationship, and definitely not a marriage.

This read more like women's fiction, which I'm usually not a huge fan of, but I enjoyed the characters and their group dynamics so much that I didn't really care.

The structure of this book is interesting. It spans about a decade of time, and we just see little bits and pieces of their lives before the story jumps sometimes months ahead in time. I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, it was a very quick read with short chapters that I flew through in only two sittings. One the other, I felt like there were times I wanted to stay in one time for a little longer, go a little more in-depth on some of the side characters and their impact on our main couple, but we would jump forward and kind of glaze over those situations and characters.

I also think the ending was a little rushed, and while I'm satisfied with the status of Laurie and Jack by the end of the book,

I wanted to see more of them together, because they barely had any sort of interaction in the second half of the book. But I guess that's kind of the point, that they still had this intense connection even being apart for years. But I wouldn't have minded 20 more pages of them in an actual relationship. The fact that the book ends the second they get together is a little bit of a letdown.

Also a small content warning for

cheating. It is a one-kiss sort of deal, but some may argue that there is also emotional cheating happening, so I wanted to throw it out there for people who don't like to read about that sort of thing.

All in all, I enjoyed this book but it's definitely not a favorite romance of mine. I liked it more as a story about a group of friends navigating their twenties and trying to reach their goals. I could absolutely see this being a movie. I would read from this author again.