i am convinced that everyone recommending this constantly for the past few years was some weird joke. it is extremely boring and confusing and there are too many characters to keep track of. it becomes mildly interesting in the end but it takes over 300 very slow pages to do so and is definitely not worth it. the romance is sooo bland and boring and like the characters had no personality or chemistry and like lowkey he cheated on his then girlfriend for her? and like the interesting part was the competition but like that was barely part of it and then when it was it was like tge author chose the most boring way to have it happen uhhhhhh its so boring like i only finished this book out of sheer spite i was very disappointed because I really thought i would love this after so many people praising this book for a literal decade but no it sucked and now im scared to take peoples recs ever again :(