I'd actually started and abandoned this book maybe last year or the year before, and I'm not convinced I really missed out when I made that call. Two stars honestly feels generous, but I was pleasantly surprised by the epilogue — though it seemed at odds with preestablished principles and narrative arcs.

This story quite possibly contains every YA het-romance cliché ever. While I applaud the intent of bringing attention to the flawed social systems and its many cracks that kids like Mallory and Rider so easily fall through, as well as the lasting psychological effects, I can't say that I agree with some of the themes expressed. Casting Paige as the bitchy established-girlfriend in particular bothered me, especially after we find out that

Spoiler

her dad's an abusive drunk and she intentionally gets between him and her little sister

, which is disturbingly passed over in the drama of Mallory's life; if it was an attempt to humanize her, make her a more sympathetic character rather than a hostile obstacle to Mallory and Rider's relationship, it wasn't very well executed. (I prefer Jenny Han's setup, where Peter K is still there for Gen post-breakup because she matters to him, even knowing that his gf Lara Jean's not completely comfortable with the situation.)

I found Mallory to be annoyingly moralistic, by which I mean that for someone who's supposedly so uncertain of herself and is convinced she's "weird," she's certainly very opinionated about everyone else's lives, as expressed in ideas like

Spoiler

Ainsley "has to" talk about her inevitably eventually going blind, Rider "has to" change himself first (which is shortly contradicted when he tells Mallory she saved him, and she follows up by saying that she "put him back together"), Carl and Rosa just "don't get it" in all the usual teenage-angsty areas of boyfriend and future plans

. Also, can we stop romanticizing disobeying/lying to parental figures? (In most cases they really are coming from a good place, even if we don't see it that way in the moment!)

There was also an attempt at a relatable teenage-girl narrative voice, but it was stilted and off. (Maybe it's a formatting error, but "liked-liked" in particular bugs me — the emphasis should be on the first "liked," as anyone who's used the phrase knows; also, it's a very middle-school term. Also, "an alumni" is just wrong.) The prose waffles between clinically, painfully detailed play-by-play of every single miniscule happening and cringey vagueness (to paraphrase: she wasn't sure what he smelled like, but it smelled good), which was at best distracting.