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lizshayne 's review for:

All The Feels by Olivia Dade
3.0
emotional medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

I...wanted to like this story and mostly did. The portrayal of ADHD was really good and also the awareness of how society punishes otherness—neurodivergence, fatness, the audacity to be female and not gorgeous—was extremely thoughtfully done.
And then you just throw in two tropes I HATE: "romance protagonists will do literally anything other than have a conversation with each other" and "we've spent the entire book with person A making it clear to person B that this is what hurts them and then that's how person B decides to hurt them".
And, I mean, I just...did we have to do that? Could we just...not? Could we not turn the book on the partners of neurodivergent people getting angry at them for being neurodivergent, because that's a LOT of what this felt like. 
I realize it's super complicated because so much of romance novels is about repentance and the work of making amends...and also every romance novel is implicitly an argument for what kind of behavior is beyond the pale, what kind requires groveling, and what kind is just an honest error that requires little more than an acknowledgement. The mismatch between the hurt done and the atonement bothers me. Just...
Alex was SO aware and careful of the ways in which Lauren is consistently made fun of and makes sure that she knows that. And then she leaves him and tells him she's leaving him because he's, well, more or less to ADHD and doesn't do a good enough job of caring about her. There were so many better ways to play out this disagreement and this one was just so painful and then...it had no consequences.

IDK, it's hard when so many ideas that I love (nonstandard protagonists! yelling at the GoT showrunners! fanfic!) run into the tropes that I hate. I get why they exist and I get that so much of this is personal preference, but also...it just feels thoughtless.