“It wasn’t the end that mattered, but every word leading up to it.”

lovely premise with an arguably less lovely execution.

I want to start by saying that I get why so many people love this. The idea of stumbling upon the town from your favorite books when you need it most is a beautiful thought, like finding yourself in Star's Hollow after the worst year of your life. There's something so beautiful about getting to be there for a world the way it was for you. Truthfully, those were the only aspects of the book I liked.

Everything else... oh boy.

The writing style is terribly redundant and self-indulgent. From the repeated "minty eyes" catastrophe to two characters clenching their hands into fists in the same paragraph to an insane amount of repeated phrases (such as, "perish the thought"), I was repeatedly hit over the head by how much I wish this book had been written slightly differently.

I also struggle with grumpy x sunshine, especially when the man is grumpy (usually just code for obnoxious asshole issues) and the woman is sunshine (usually quirky to an alarming point) and this book did not prove me wrong. It's also an incredibly hard line to walk for the author to convince me their feelings are changing and in this one, the chemistry felt so forced.

Not to mention the first time they kiss, she says he tastes like onion rings. I get it. I get why this was meant to be comforting. I would rather not have read it though :)

This might have been a 2.5 rating if not for the end. I won't go into spoilers, but damn. This isn't about the plot reveal, but about everything that happens afterwards. What the actual heck.

One final thing I wanted to mention, I did feel like the BIPOC were talked about slightly odd in here, but as I'm not in either of the communities mentioned, I can't speak on it. I did want to include it here, because ignoring it felt weird.
To put it briefly: The only Black character we meet (unless I missed the description of another character, which I very well could have) is an older lady running the diner and Eileen immediately thinks she looks like she's the town therapist, carrying everyone's problems on her shoulders. Then, there's a Samoan character that's described as "always wearing Hawaiian vacation shirts, with the charisma of Dave Bautista and the swagger of Dwayne Johnson."

Overall, I get why this book means a lot to certain people, but I just couldn't make it through my issues with it.