Very charming! Funny and cute. Definitely interested to read more 

This book includes history of Appalachia and the history of how Appalachia has been misrepresented. While it is short, it holds an incredible amount of information. If you have read, seen, or even considered <i>Hillbilly Elegy</i>, you need to read this. Appalachia goes far beyond the white conservative population that is incorrectly painted as the majority. This goes into the profoundly racist history of journalism featuring Appalachia and Vance's narrative and personal relationship to it. There is also discussion of the rich leftist revolutionary action that has come out of Appalachia in the face of abuse and terror from coal companies (history that I never learned even a little bit about in school, despite being a stone's throw away from South Central Appalachia). Not only does a lot of the common narrative about Appalachia wholly misrepresent what has happened, but it is deeply rooted in white supremacist and eugenicist ideologies. 

This book was adorable, but does far more than the trope in the title will tell you. On top of a perfectly cute romace plot, we get to see more into other aspects of these characters' lives. There are (two very different) complex family relationships, a discussion of religion and culture, and a look at friendship. This explored some tough topics while maintaining the lightness of a YA romance.

 There was so much I really loved about this. I loved the characters and the backdrop of cosplay. The story goes from being in the present day to having chapters that flash back and I think this was utalized really well! There were some details that were a little too convenient in the end, but it was still a really great time. 

 I was fairly excited about this when it came out -- the promise of queer spooky shit that reviewers I trust were raving about. But I was concerned because this isn't a genre I frequently read. It absolutely did not disappoint. 

The first couple of hours, I was undecided. The characters seemed brash and unlikable (and the cheesy, wavering southern accent from the audiobook reader did not help). But at a certain point, the depth of the characters and the layers that were created in the story started to show and I was completely hooked. 

This is a spooky southern dark academia, certainly. But I didn't expect such rich things happening with the characters and other parts of the story. This is full of messy people making questionable decisions. That raw vulnerability of messy queers in lit fic was absolutely here, and more than that, it was tied in thematically. The specter is what you discover it is through the lore, but it is also very much the ghost of permanently unrequited love -- a shadow, the result of (of course) death, but also of the unspoken, the unlived -- the fear and dissociation of homophobia by way of toxic masculinity. 

This hits on other themes as well through the story, looking at corruption in academia and of wealth that is accumulated through death -- the (tied) legacies of white supremacy looking at old wealthy families and university. There is so much more I'm sure I could unpack given the time. 

Looking at the characters, while they were certainly unlikable, they were complex and that built as the story goes on. I ended up really loving them and wanting to dig more into their characters and know what makes them tick (which often resulted in me pausing to speculate on what their birth charts probably looked like). 

This is absolutely a book I intend on rereading and annotating, so maybe I'll wind up with an essay about it eventually, but this should be more than enough until then. This was such an incredible read and definitely surpassed my expectations. 

UPDATE: Reread
 I listened to the audiobook at the beginning of the year and then reread it in physical form. I fucking love this book. To see my initial thoughts, I do have a review up for the audiobook specifcially (Though I will copy/paste so that the reviews are visble on both editions).
 
 Upon reread, I was able to really dig into things that I didn't notice on my first read. I knew it was really queer then, but I really got a good look at how the queerness is woven into everything: into Andrew's perspective and so many themes.

The relationship between Eddie and Andrew is queer all the way down; not just queer as in not heterosexual, but queer as in defying labels -- ineffable -- both before and especially now that Eddie is a ghost. Looking at the haunting and lore around the curse, there is a lot (from my perspective - though I am not an expert on the genre) that gets turned on its head in a very queer way. Andrew is brought into the curse through his connection with Eddie, not through marriage or blood relation, but through a horrific twist on the idea of a curse passed on through bloodline. Another queer element is the blending of so many lines (making Andrew's surname - Blur - more than apt). Lines of relationships, of living and dead, of Andrew and Eddie themselves, of the themes of haunting and heartbreak and desire and suppression, of dream and wake -- I could probably go on but I will stop there.

 
 
 There's so much about this that is devastatingly tender while also being raw and terrifying and unsettling as hell. There are so many details about this that I don't know how to articulate. But I am so glad that I did a reread and I already have other things that I plan on looking for when I reread it again. 

I appreciated a lot about this. I liked the premise of the romance and the role that friendship played. There was a lot of complexity here. However, there were parts of the writing and dialogue that felt clunky. 

I also felt more frustrated with certain parts of the story. I didn't really understand why some of the conflict was a conflict. Like, why astronomy was a "bad" degree to get,

why teaching would be worse than a research job, or what person would be disappointed in a kid for not getting a job IMMEDIATELY.

Maybe this is just me missing something, but it felt like an over-inflated part of the conflict.

With that being said, it was still a pretty solid debut. I think some of my own personal emotions got in the way of my enjoyment of it, so I should probably revisit it when I am further away from being in a quarter life crisis as well.