This was a super cute, Gilmore Girls-inspired story about a film nerd and a cheerleader who fall in love. And honestly, I was pretty down for that story. I feel like if you are also down for that story, you'll like this book.

The two characters were both well done and interesting with strong motivations throughout the book. I enjoyed reading from them and enjoyed the different take on Paris and Rory. I did think at times Rachel got a bit annoying, but it was never overwhelming. For the most part, I was just rooting for the both of them to reach their happy ending, which is essentially all I need from a contemporary romance.

The feminism was also really wonderful in this. There's a decent sized discussion on internalized misogyny. Rachel is filming a retelling of The Odyssey and has written Helen of Troy as the villain, pretty and vapid and utterly selfish. But this rubs Sana the wrong way, who thinks Rachel is treating Helen as an object the same way she was in the original, despite the feminist retelling. It spends a lot of time exploring feminist takes, and women having agency regardless of who they are or how they're treated by men.

There's a lovely quote on page 248- "It was easy to digest, this film. A consumable kind of feminist vision. The pretty girl was bad and the quiet girl was good and she had warned them all. But it didn't question why those women had been pitted against each other in the first place."

But I did have some issues with the book, and I think the largest was the Gilmore Girls inspiration. It's so obvious this book was meant to be like Gilmore Girls and at points it was too much for me. There were too many specific scenes drawn from the source material, too many near quotes, too many relationships. The grandparents were just the Gilmores, down to the weekly scheduled dinners because of their estranged relationship with their daughter who ran away after becoming pregnant as a teen. Sana (Rory) ran into Rachel (Paris) and wrecked her project at the beginning, almost causing her to fail. The broken arm from the car crash, Massoud (Christopher) showing up unexpectedly. It was too close to the original and at times it was so hard to look at this book on its own. It felt flatter, like some of the characters were just weaker copies of the Gilmore Girls version. Some scenes felt like they existed only because they came from Gilmore Girls, and not because they fit naturally within this story. It was honestly strongest for me when the Gilmore Girls comparison was just a loose inspiration. And I'm very interested in Safi's other book because of that. I want to see what her storytelling is like on its own, when it's not actively trying to be like something else.

I think the dialogue felt a little too on the nose. Just by existing, everything in a book needs to further the story, but there's a subtle way to do it that flows within the story. In this book it felt obvious and unnatural, like the characters knew the ending and were pushing toward it. It wasn't terrible, but it definitely felt forced.

Some of the problems seemed like they were too big of a deal in the story for what they were. At one point Rachel's film teacher doesn't like the changes she's making to Helen's character (from the point above) and demands Rachel change it back or she'll fail. Rachel frets about how to tell Sana that she's betraying her. And like, it's really not that big of a deal? It's high school. Just say your crappy teacher threatened to fail you unless you did the project her crappy way, problem solved. Make yourself a version you like for good measure and in two months, no one will remember the old crappy version. But it was the catalyst for basically the entire last third of the book, and I rolled my eyes a lot.

I also have a note about the cover. This isn't a critique of the book itself, and I'm fully aware that authors have no control over covers, but it's so disappointing to see covers that make the main characters whiter and thinner than they're described in the text. Sana is described as browner than her cousin, who's already browner than her pale sister, but the cover image didn't really reflect that. And Rachel is repeatedly described as larger than Sana, to the point where her sweatshirt was huge on Sana. She's also described as soft and while that's not the same as fat, she has a moment of reflection about how Sana specifically desires her for being "soft," which society in general considers an undesirable trait. But again, the Rachel on the cover doesn't seem to reflect that. It doesn't make the text any worse, but it is disappointing.

Overall, even with my critiques, I really enjoyed this. I was down for the story and it was such a fun read. I highly recommend if it sounds like your kind of book because it probably it.