I received a review copy from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

TW: talk of death, hate talk, girl-shaming, alcoholic parent
Rep: bisexual mc

I really was excited to read this book but unfortunately, it didn't deliver or meet my expectations. Iliana and Rhodes have been sworn enemies ever since an incident occurred last year changing Iliana's life. This incident led her to resent Rhodes, her best friend's roommate.

This novel is told in dual perspective between Iliana and Rhodes who both attend the same boarding school in the South. They are arch enemies in real life but secret lovers and co-authors of an Alice in Wonderland comic online as I-Kissed-Alice and Curious-In-Chesire. I really appreciated the elements of multimedia scattered throughout the book and getting to see pieces of the comic was really fun. However, I wished there had been more! It felt like the author was just telling me about Alice and Chesire's chemistry rather than showing me through the messages. They didn't really have a lot of conversation nor did I really get to know their story of meeting online.

Both characters seemed to have the same voice, they weren't distinct. I was often confused while reading each chapter because I would forget which character was speaking and flip back to the chapter header. The story was confusing and it really had a lot of potential. However, more of the characters lives, struggles and personalities should've been given more detail so I could really get to know the characters besides just that Rhodes is wealthy and Iliana is poor. I did enjoy Griffin's character, though and how he had to hide his love for ballet. This story really showed all aspects of art whether it's visual or modern art.

A big issue I had was with the mental health representation. Rhodes claims to be depressed and her therapist mentions it but her therapist is THE WORST and is only used to "cure" Rhodes' creator's block. I really would've liked to see Rhodes mental health be focused on instead of just brushed off by giving her a really bad therapist. There's also A LOT of talk about death and dying and I'm not sure if that's just me personally but it's a triggering topic.

Another issue I had was that the whole book is a lot of girl on girl hate. Iliana is really rude and selfish toward her friend Sarah and Sarah doesn't even do anything about Iliana and Rhodes' toxic relationship. No one is a "good friend" in this scenario. The first page opens up with Iliana exclaiming her hatred for Rhodes and by the end of the book, they're both calling each other bitches.

Lastly, I was afraid that this book would be very white-washed because of the change in the cover art. The author expressed on social media that she wanted her characters to just be two white queer girls because she didn't want to take away any marginalized people's voice. However, this book was VERY whitewashed. We have one black character, her name is Sierra and 26 pages left in the story we see some diversity with the characters at the Capstone finals. We really could've had more diversity in this book between the friend group, just saying.

I would like to read more from this author because I feel that she does have the potential to write something good. I just didn't enjoy this one all that much!