Probably my favorite Shakespeare play

SO SO SO GOOD! Read it in like nine hours! Grayson will always have my heart!

DEVOURED this book in five hours in basically one sitting. It's very easy to read but the mystery got a little convoluted in some aspects

The fact that Knives Out is one of my favorite movies is a pretty big influence into the fact that I found this book so enjoyable! I never quite knew which direction the mystery is going in. The Hawthorne brothers were all pretty interesting characters, but I was especially enraptured by Jameson and Grayson, who ended being on opposite ends of the spectrum for my favorite book boyfriend tropes. Jameson is the impulsive, reckless, emotional mess and Grayson is the hyper-confident, responsible, asshole, and I'm just OBSESSED with the love triangle between Jameson, Grayson, and Avery (and the ghost of Emily).

The beginning of this book was so good! The academic rivalry trope is top tier! Alice is such a determined workaholic (I can relate lol) and Henry is so good at everything without even trying. The fact that Henry doesn't even realize that Alice hates him because to him the competition between them is just a fun little game while to her she has to work herself half-to-death just to match him -- it's just *chef's kiss*

The end of the book is so unhinged though. There was definitely a more appropriate climax to the story than an actual KIDNAPPING. Everything else was somewhat grounded in reality but then it just went off the rails.

I also would have like the wealth of the setting to show a little more. We're constantly told that Alice is in a different tax bracket than her peers but we're only ever shown Alice's lack of wealth, never the wealth of her peers. If the love interest, Henry, is going to be the obscenely wealthy and powerful heir to a tech empire, the readers should at least get to see that obscene wealth.

Carrie Soto is an amazing character. She shines through her imperfections - her stubbornness, her unrelenting ambition, her brutal honesty. Carrie is such a real character that she almost jumps off the page. Even in the moments that you absolutely hate Carrie, you still root for her.

Only drawback is that there is a lot of narration of tennis matches that just couldn't quite hold my interest. Otherwise, it was such a good novel!

Did I enjoy reading this novel? No. 

Did I enjoy reading this Reylo fanfiction? Yes. 

 

I thought it was a delightful read. I also think that in order to fully enjoy the story, you cannot treat it the same way you would treat a published novel. It’s very very obviously fanfiction. 

 

The relationship between Ava and Nico/Daniel is inappropriate no matter how the author tried to spin it. It’s so sketchy that Nico was attracted to a girl who he thinks is his seventeen-year-old student, and that doesn’t go away just because Ava was actually twenty-four. Ava befriending teengirls seven years younger than her under the pretense of them being the same age is pretty sketchy, too. Of course, Ava only passes for seventeen because she’s such an immature character that it’s hard to even visualize her as a twenty-four-year-old. 

 

My main criticism is that author obviously wanted to write a teacher-student relationship romance but instead of just writing that teacher-student relationship, she turned the plot into a convoluted mess just so she could have the appearance of the teacher-student relationship without any of the consequences. 

 

The epilogue chapters were so unnecessary. I didn’t need to see Ava and Daniel (who have never had one single conversation about their plans for the future) have the marriage/white picket fence/twin babies future in detail to assume that they’re going to be happy together. 

 

Overall there were definitely some fun parts but it was overshadowed by the fact that this just wasn’t a story of publishable quality. The difference between For Love and Bylines and The Love Hypothesis is that while both started their lives as Reylo fanfiction, TLH could stand on its own outside of the fandom space and FLAB couldn't.

The core of this novel is a perpetual hopefulness that lightens even the most tragic of circumstances -- a reminder that being alive is worth it even when the world is not being good. The novel was written in a very friendly way even as it devotes its pages to some of the most unfriendly of topics — racism, disability, chronic pain, gun violence, abortion, etc. I have no interest at all in video games and I was still enraptured by the plot and characters.

LOVED LOVED LOVED! The mystery elements were enrapturing and I really enjoyed the feminist elements and undertones!

A few boring parts but overall a really good work of science fiction.