I had pretty mixed feelings on this book. There were some things I enjoyed quite a bit, but a lot that rubbed me the wrong way. Positives first:

I really liked the romance between the two main characters. I think if that had been the only plotline I would have enjoyed this quite a bit more. Both Max and Jordan were fully developed, interesting characters. They both had flaws and those flaws impacted their relationship, but they were given time to work through them in the book. It wasn't that their flaws went away or their partner thought it was cute, but it was actually shown how their relationship was negatively impacted and how they communicated and dealt with the issues. I think that's not something that's actually shown in a lot of books and I loved that. The sections of the book that focused solely on them as a couple were my favorite.

My only real negative thought about the pair of them was that the romance moved really fast. The book took place over the course of about a month (ish) and it's hard for me to buy into them falling in love so quickly. It felt way too fast.

Had a few more thoughts on the negative side, though. First were the friends. Max and Jordan both have two friends (Max's "Amigos" and Jordan's "wives"). They were all excruciatingly annoying. Like insufferably so. Thankfully they weren't in the story all that much, but they felt like annoying caricatures rather than real people. Maybe it's because I'm getting older too, but I've never heard teenagers talk in so much slang. It sounded more like the way someone would talk online instead of in real life.

I also wasn't the biggest fan of Konigsberg's writing style. It's first person present tense which is never my favorite anyway, but there were also so many weird throw away lines that didn't make much sense. Like- "I remember wondering what it would feel like to be that spare." Like what does that even mean? There were a number of times I stopped in puzzlement for things like that before I just gave up and kept going.

It also felt like certain plot points didn't have full enough resolutions. Like I wanted some kind of big emotional payoff for all the struggle an issue has caused, and then it would resolve in a line or two. But at other points we'd have such long scenes for situations that didn't really deserve it. I never really felt satisfied with any of the story outside of the relationship. And of course it ended with a whole page of them discussing the importance of the title which was just such an annoying way to end the book. Like not terrible, but just generic.

I think the topics this book dealt with were too serious for the tone. There was so much that was cute and lighthearted and just the boys running around and falling in love and having fun. But also Jordan is about to be homeless. The whole premise of the story is that Jordan needs to make money with the food truck or he'll be homeless. But it never felt like it was dealt with with the gravitas it needed. Jordan himself rarely took it seriously and went on lemonade tests through all the Sonics in their area rather than save money. The way all the characters treated it just felt like it didn't fit in properly with the story. Like this could have just been about saving the food truck instead and for me the lower stakes would have worked better.

But not a bad book by any means. I probably wouldn't go out of my way to recommend it, but it's worth it for the relationship and is probably significantly better if you get along with the author's writing style more than I did.