Oof this book. This is only my third Becky Albertalli book. I appreciate what she has done for YA books (and especially queer YA books), but she isn’t personally one of my favorite authors. And I know why she wrote this book. I know what she’s gone through and that this is probably her most personal book yet. And while I’m still not sure she’s an author I will seek out in the future, this book punched me in the gut 😬🙃

I have so many thoughts about this book and I’m not sure what to do with all of them yet. Because there are so many things I relate to in this book, but also so many things (or, tbh, a character), I truly hated. Which honestly is probably the point.

This is going to get spoilery, but I'm not sure which parts I'd block out, so proceed at your own risk.

I’m going to start with Imogen because she was very sweet and so many parts of her personality resonated with me: the people-pleasing, the constant self-doubt, the molding yourself to fit other people’s expectations. The “am I actually queer or am I pretending” to “am I queer enough” to “yes I am queer!” pipeline that so many bi people go through 👀

And now Gretchen. Poor traumatized, misled, “needs to stop projecting her shit onto other people” Gretchen. I understand the point of Gretchen as a character. I promise, I do. She served a purpose in the narrative. But oh my god was she the most frustrating character!!! Literally Twitter discourse in human form. She was just on the wrong side of too much and every time she showed up, I kind of dreaded what buzzwords she was going to throw into the conversation. Mostly because “queer gatekeeper” and “discourse starter” seemed to make up the majority of her personality. And the worst part is people like her actually exist! I’ve never met one irl but they are EVERYWHERE online. And they seem to hate bi people the most. They suck, especially because they are queer themselves and should know better than to be assholes to other (maybe, possibly) queer people. Queerness does not exist in a neat little box, and not everyone can be categorized by easy labels, which is what Gretchen wants to do to everyone. Not everyone figures out their identities at the same point in their lives. Literally no one has the same lived experience with their queerness. Because Gretchen has figured out her own identity and she has had to deal with homophobic crap (which sucks, yes!), she wants answers to everyone else’s queer experiences too. She sees everything in black and white (literally exactly what happens on Twitter, the land of no nuance, ALL THE TIME) and leaves no gray area, which is not at all what real life is like. Gretchen is what happens when labels created to find community become weaponized to try to “weed out” everyone who doesn’t fit every bullet point on some imaginary queer checklist.

Gretchen’s toxicity is so entrenched into Imogen’s life that Imogen is doubting her queerness all the way up to the end of the book!!! When she is literally living her HFN with a girlfriend. Gretchen has burrowed so deep into Imogen’s consciousness with her horrible way of viewing queerness that Imogen is going to take (probably) years to undo all of that harm and self-doubt.

I think the fact that I have written so much about Gretchen shows how effective she is as a character. But I still did not like her at all. I am glad that she and Imogen didn’t really end the book on good terms. It’s not happy, but it’s realistic because Gretchen truly hurt Imogen in many ways.

The rest of the side characters were great. I loved Edith, the best little sister Imogen could have asked for. Lili was amazing, and showed what a TRUE best friend was. And Tessa was just adorable 🥰 10/10 supporting cast.

This book was both very sweet and also really hard to read at the same time. I’m sure it was also really difficult to write. Usually when I give a book 5 stars it’s because I loved it, but this isn’t quite the same. I thought this was really effective at what it set out to do, but I never want to read this book again, because ouch 😅