content warnings: intrusive thoughts, death, alcoholism, drug abuse, sexual assault, mentions of cancer, unexpected birth
representation: lesbian main character with anxiety, lesbian love interest, main f/f relationship, gay side characters, side hindu character

I'm going to be totally honest, this book felt more like a four star for me, but looking at it objectively it's a three.

This is a very average book about a girl, Maeve, who moves to a new place to live with her dad and meets a cute girl, with the addition of her suffering from an anxiety disorder. As I said, it's very average. The writing is competent, if seeming to be overdone at times when it comes to the language being used. The characters are fine, none of them fleshed out enough to be compelling but none of them so bland that you don't care.

Except for one: Salix. She's the love interest, and is a complete manic pixie dream girl. The name alone suggests that, let's be real, and her characterisation reads as if Carrie Mac googled the characteristics of a MPD and wrote them into her character. She has one hobby (music), a family that we never meet, a mother dying of cancer (this is literally only mentioned once in passing, very reminiscent of The Room), a seeming unending amount of love for Maeve, and no flaws whatsoever. There are even a few moments when it almost seems like the narrative is trying to make it out like she's fixing Maeve's anxiety, which I found very uncomfortable.

Now, onto some positives. One of the highlights was this books look at addiction: Maeve's father is an alcoholic, and there is a lot of discussion of how a person's alcoholism can ruin a family, something which you see both in Maeve reflecting on her childhood and in the present.

Now, the reason why personally this is a four star is because of how much this book seemed tailored for me. Let's start with the obvious, Maeve's anxiety. While the way her anxiety presents itself is different to mine, the reactions she got from well-meaning people who loved her was so similar to my own experiences it was spooky. People trying to urge you to do something even though just the thought of it makes you feel like you're dying, and then them dismissing you as paranoid or attention-seeking or difficult, even when you apologise because you (logically) know that you're being unreasonable. I was genuinely tearing up when those moments would happen.

There was also the emphasis on step-family, which I really enjoyed and related to as someone with a half-brother, stepmum, three stepsisters, and so many step-grandparents/aunts/uncles/cousins. Maeve's dad remarried years ago and, with Maeve's stepmum, had twin boys and there's another baby on the way. This book never once tries to tell you than Claire, Corbin, Owen and the new baby aren't as much Maeve's family as her dad and mum; she loves them, they love her, and they're her real family, no questions asked.

As much as this book made me feel, it's still pretty average and I don't know if I could really recommend it to anyone.