Thank you to Netgalley for providing me with a free ARC of this novel. Regardless of the way I acquired the novel, the thoughts, opinions, and views stated in this review are completely unbiased and one hundred percent my own.

This book had such a good start! I was hooked right off the bat. While our MC isn't necessarily the most likable, I can think we can all admit that we've been there, or been our worst version of ourselves at one point or another. I'm a reader who doesn't need to like a character to be able to like a book, if that makes sense. So I took our MC's outbursts, and poor interactions with fellow human beings with a grain of salt. Not to mention that her father had died, and her boyfriend had out-of-the-blue broken up with her. The girl was probably due an outburst or two. Some people (coughs-me) hide away in their room eating their body weight in ice cream until they're ready to face the world again, while other people just take out their aggression on the wrong person. That's how Julie meets Nico.

I really enjoyed how their lives were constantly crossing paths. It put me on the edge of my seat, wondering when they would by chance meet again. Nico is honestly described like a saint. He handles all of Julie's outbursts, bad behavior, and vomit (uh...yeah) like a champ. If there is one redeeming character in this book, it's Nico, Nico's mom, and Julie's mom (okay, I guess there are a couple redeeming characters).

I do think a few of the relationships portrayed here borderline on toxic. Julie's relationship with her best friend is in many ways uncalled for, and how the women in her family treat each other was a little displeasing. As a personal note, I've dealt with a lot of toxic relationships in my own life, and tend to see them everywhere. Maybe girlfriends really do yell at each other, tell each other they are ruining their lives, and then five seconds later say they're the best in the world? To each their own.

In terms of writing, this was an admirable attempt. I felt at times really thrown off when scenes would cut in and out of each other. One second we were in a conversation with Julie and her mom and the next second she was with Nico two days later. There was no explanation of how things left off with conversations, or how a date would end. Suddenly, after a major event (like running into the ex), we just flashed forward to the next day with no mention of how Nico reacted? It felt really unrealistic and pulled me out of the story a few times.

I think the overall plot was super cute, but felt the novel was strongest in the first half of the book. It sort of lost steam after that, and I stopped caring what happened to our characters. I finished the book because I wanted to know how their love story ended, but I didn't necessarily need all of the descriptions of why her ex was such a tool, or how her heart was changing now that she had Nico. I think a little more editing would have been beneficial, but it wasn't an overall disappointment.