I had mixed feelings about this book. On the one hand, it had me bawling my eyes out. On the other, I had a lot of issues with the storytelling itself.

To start with the positives, this book absolutely hit me in the feels. I was reading it in the presence of my boyfriend and literally had to put it down at one point to leave the room because I didn't want to cry that hard in front of him. And then when I came back a few minutes later, I started crying again. It's obviously doing something right if it can make me that emotional.

I also loved that it dealt a lot with classism and the way people from different backgrounds have entirely different views of the world. There are three main characters, one is a white girl who comes from an affluent family (father is a dentist, mother is a real estate agent). Two are boys around or below the poverty line. Lydia obviously knows they have different experiences because of this, but I really enjoyed the juxtaposition of Lydia's life with Trader Joe's and Panera with Dill's dinners of expired food from the grocery store where he worked. Having both of those side by side made it hit so much harder. I will say at times it felt very heavy handed and there was too much of a lesson being taught, but overall I appreciated that element.

I thought the present tense flashbacks were jarring and awkward. The characters would be wandering around living life, and then smell freshly mowed grass and it'd be like "suddenly, he's 13, in his father's church." Flashbacks can be done well, but these felt much too forced and interrupted the flow of the story for me.

Now on to my two biggest issues. The first was Lydia. She was, in general, just an unpleasant person. I didn't relate to her, and as the story went on, she just got worse and worse. She runs a popular fashion blog, but never mentions either of her two friends. At one point after a bad day, Dill asks her why she never mentions them and Lydia takes this as an attack. She goes off on Dill and tells him not to take his bad day out on her, until eventually Dill is forced to apologize and beg for forgiveness. Then she makes him promise never to ask again and says she promises she has a good reason for protecting his privacy. Except earlier, she said she never mentioned either of her friends because they weren't "on brand" (literally the term she used). And then went on to use their difficult lives in her college admissions essay because they are perfectly on brand for that. She also said she wanted her friends to go to college because she didn't want them to lead pathetic lives (again, literally the term she used).

I understand character growth happens in a story, but there comes to a point where I don't care. After treating her friends so badly, I don't care if she learns the error of her ways. I just think she was pretty crappy and her friends deserve better. And I especially didn't like that a kid who had a pretty rough life was used to teach her a lesson. Which leads into my next point.

There are three narrators. It's not too many, but when the book is pretty evenly split between them, each character needs to be able to carry the story. It didn't feel like one character had enough of a story. They were interesting, their life was interesting, but they didn't have any kind of narrative arc like the other two had. They were just used to propel the other two characters in their own stories. This rubbed me the wrong way because it felt like this character, all the tragedy in their life, was just a cheap prop used to manipulate the reader's emotions and elicit change in the two real main characters. It felt uncomfortable and I found it very off putting.

My final point is in regards to the feminism and Lydia's sexuality. This is kind of a minor point as it was hardly in the story at all, but the feminism felt very superficial and fake. Like it was mostly about repeating buzzwords and calling men gross. I'd have been a bit more forgiving of that if it felt like it was intentional because the character is just an immature kid who has a lot more learning to do, but it didn't feel that way. It felt like that was Zentner's interpretation of feminism. I could easily be wrong, that was just how I felt while reading it.

And Lydia's sexuality was brought up a few times. She was called slurs and when asked if she was a lesbian, she said the answer was probably yes, she's a raging lesbians, but she answers on a case by case basis. But her only relationship involved a guy. This is something that wouldn't have bothered me if it was written by an LGBT+ woman, but coming from a man, it kind of made me uncomfortable how wishy washy it was. I was never sure if Lydia actually was intended as part of the LGBT+ community or just saying that for her blog.

But in general, I did enjoy this. I can see why people would have a lot of problems and rate this book lower, but I also see why people love it. For me, the emotions this book evoked outweighed a lot of my issues.