My feelings on this book are very mixed. I've heard nothing but incredible things about it and was looking forward to finding another contemporary to love and was really disappointed as I started reading it and just didn't feel the same way everyone else did.

The positives first:
- The relationships between the siblings, in particular Charlie and his sister, were some of the most authentic I've ever read
- The relationship between Charlie and Patrick was easily my favourite of all the friendships
- The book approached therapy and psychologists/psychiatrists in a very positive way which I really liked seeing
- As heartbreaking as it was, I thought that the

Spoiler

sexual assault

was handled with a lot of care and was very well done
- In my opinion, the second half (in particular from part 4 onwards) was a massive improvement over the first half

Now the negatives:
- I really didn't like the writing. In particular the constant use of 'and' and Charlie putting quotation marks around things that didn't need them
- I was never invested in Charlie and Sam's relationship and never once thought they could work well together
- The characters all felt really bland, which was probably due to the writing because they are interesting characters but the way they were written made them seem like the fictional people they are and I never felt any emotional connection to them
- The way that different stories were told I oftentimes found boring as it was just Charlie telling you information

I really wish I love this book a lot more than I do but I just didn't see what everyone else saw in this