every story in this collection was good! like i liked most, if not all of them. the essays were cool too. honestly i picked this up on a whim but it delivered like this is a really good collection of short stories and essays

when i first saw NEVER EVER GETTING BACK TOGETHER, i was immediately excited. i love a good rivals-to-lovers, especially when it's sapphic, and i'm happy to say that it's delivered. it's funny and lighthearted, and the romance is cute.

i enjoyed the characters, and gonzales does a good job of crafting maya and skye and allowing us to see both their perspectives. the supporting characters were also well-flushed out and nuanced. i loved the friendships that formed on the show, and the relationships were well-written when you take into consideration the stressful and weird setting around these characters. every character (at least the ones on the reality show) had depth. shout-out to perrie by the way...she's so cool.

the reality-tv show aspect was also done well! i'm not a big watcher of relationship reality tv, but i thought it felt mostly accurate! the scripted lines, faking your emotions, stuff like that is what makes reality tv Reality TV...so it captured that well.

the romance!!! it was well-developed and i liked seeing maya and skye grow closer as they tried to take down jordy. it wasn't too fast or too slow.

overall, i quite enjoyed reading this book! sophie gonzales is a good writer and i enjoy reading her works.

thanks to netgalley for the arc

i just couldn't vibe with the writing style.

live video of me reading this book: snORK mimimimimi...this book is boring. the characters fell flat, the romance was boring. i felt nothing going in and nothing going out

this was SO GOOD!!! i need to put more thoughts down

well..... some parts were good! i thought mina's inner dynamic, her struggle with mental health, her relationship with her sister, and her relationship with nyc were written well, so props to the author for that. 

however, this book is marketed as a romance, but i think it would've fared better if it focused more on mina's family dynamics and her relationship with new york city instead of her relationship with emmitt.  i saw a reviewer bring up a point about how mina's love of film is just told to us, not shown, and i agree. it'd be nice if we saw more of mina's love of film instead of the author just telling us

emmitt and mina... while their relationship is cute, their banter was ??? not great and it's not quite the hate-to-love trope. also why was emmitt's personality just being hot, british, and wearing rings? 
the author states in her blurb she likes writing about boys with rings. geniunely what does that even mean. is a boy who wears rings like a new type of human? do we need to research? what's going on. 

also idk how many times i gotta tap the sign NO REFERENCES THAT DATE YOUR BOOK. the stan twitter parts made me cringe enough is enough

radiant and mystical are the words i would use to describe it. it melted my brain a little while reading it, but i loved the intersection of music and food

i hate to be rude but chloe why did u decide to visit them after texting them approximately four(4) times...like c'mon you do not know these people...

sasha, monique, reggie elite trio...who's doing it like them

this is mcquiston's best work #tome. i loved everything in this book, from chloe's relationship with the aforementioned shara, her developing friendship with smith and rory and their dynamics, her own friend group of benji, ash, and georgia, and chloe herself. literally every aspect of this book, from the characters, the plot, the writing...everything is so good. literally nothing bad to say.