This is a review of an ARC received via Netgalley.

I finished this one a few months ago, but I was a bit too book-struck to write anything about it. I read it, and then I talked about it almost constantly and recommended it to everyone I met, and now I'm probably on some kind of blacklist, but I don't even care. I adored this book. I can't wait to buy a copy in print and highlight the absolute hell out of it. I read it in one sitting whilst at work, and the backlog was absolutely worth it.

Schneider writes so authentically and beautifully about the process of reconciling your own queer identity and stepping into it, and even though we know exactly where the story is going, there's still such a great 'will they, won't they' dynamic between the two of them that it really does leave you wondering what's going to unfold. There's a definite inevitability that looms over everything, a foreshadowing, but it doesn't weigh the book down. The moments of lightness and joy feel just as real for the awareness that they're finite. Possibly more so.

I think this one may possibly end up garnering a few comparisons to A Very Nice Girl by Imogen Crimp, which is written by an author with a very similar background, is coming out at the same time, also uses non-standard dialogue structure, and revolves around the unstable relationship between an opera student and her partner, but these really are two totally different books. A Very Nice Girl is very closed and interior, almost thriller-esque in its focus, whereas 28 Questions is much softer and more intimate, and draws you closer not just to the narrator but to Alex, her lover, and I absolutely loved that it let us fall in love with her at the same time that Amalia does. The characters here feel so real and well-drawn that I do, quite honestly, feel like I've met them.

I just don't have anything bad to say about this one at all. My one critique is that it had to end.