EDIT: 10/10/20. I've now read this book four times since it came out a year and a half ago, and I think I have an even better idea of why I love it so much.

I mentioned the political catharsis of the book in my original...original review, but I actually want to take a second to get into it. This is a book about a Texas Democrat who becomes President and it comes up over and over again. Alex's Texas binder, about how centuries of gerrymandering and restricting voting rights have left the South consistently red. And as a leftist from a red state, I cannot overstate how much reading that kind of stuff means to me. I love my home, I love the people. There are huge problems, yes, but no state is immune from these problems and the Democrats can get as riled up as they want when Trump blames COVID deaths on blue states but I have seen them dismiss red states again and again as racist pits not worth their time. In my home, in 2018 the senate race was split by just over 100,000 votes. In a state with a population of 6 million. (If that's not swing state material I don't know what is.) Blue voters in red states are fighting tooth and nail and they deserve energy put into them.

EDIT: 11/5/19. I've now read this book three times since it came out six months ago and I think I have a slightly better idea of why I love it so much. Firstly, the writing and characterization are just so good. You can tell how much McQuiston put into these characters, especially if you followed them on Twitter around the time the book came out (lol). They feel real. There's an issue with older authors writing younger characters right now because the generation gap genuinely is so big due in no small part to the internet. Alex and June and Henry and Nora feel real -- they talk the way my friends and I talk (I'm two years younger than Alex, for reference), they text the way my friends and I text. This bleeds into the writing as well. McQuiston writes in the syntax of how people tend to communicate online -- sentence fragments and capitalization to indicate emphasis, a more stream of consciousness feel. It's the first and only time I've seen an author write like this in a published book and I love it. In a way, I feel like it recognizes this version of language that we speak over text and online as legitimate. And in some ways, I feel like it's a good way to write -- it's a way we've found to communicate tone without writing out tone explicitly in the third person, something that's necessary over text, and in a way feels like the ultimate showing, not telling.

ORIGINAL REVIEW:
To be honest, I don't really have anything to say that hasn't been said in every other review, but I'll repeat those things because I really just have to gush rn.

Have you ever thought to yourself "I love enemies to lovers romance but it's never quite right?" Well folks, I give you the book that got it right. Alex and Henry are perfect. No, I will not be taking questions.

There are so many parts of this book that hit extremely hard, and I sobbed through the last 50 pages or so, as you do. What I didn't really expect to move me so much was the political catharsis. Just the fact that this book is set in an alternate universe where badass mf Ellen Claremont was elected president in 2016 was enough to get me in the passages about that election. And let's just be clear. I didn't really ever cry because I was sad, or because of the tough things that happen to the characters. I cried tears of pure, unadulterated joy because this book is so goddamn hopeful. It makes me believe that maybe the world is better than it feels like it is sometimes.

I really, really don't want to spoil anything because I would recommend that literally everyone read this book as soon as they possibly can, so I think I'm going to stop here. Just...wow.

EDIT: Reread 11/19 -- I've been in a bit of a slump lately so I decided to return to a recent favorite when I found out the audiobook for Chloe Brown was on Hoopla. The narrator was amazing and wow, what a good time. I've upped my rating to 5 stars for how happy this audiobook has made me over the past few days.

ORIGINAL REVIEW:
Firstly, I'd like to officially thank the romance novel industry's collective graphic design team for making the shift from photographs of two people almost kissing to these cute pastel cartoons.

Alright, on to the review.

If you've read a good amount of romance you know that they can be pretty algorithmic. I've pointed this out before (specifically in my review of The Unhoneymooners), but I want to talk about it again here because Hibbert follows this algorithm in all of the books of hers that I've read.

So here's how it goes:
1) Brief introduction for each of our main characters, probably a chapter or two each.
2) Meet cute / first contact at around 7%
3) Resistance, courtship, relationship starting 10-30%
4) Characters get together! Sex! 35-40%
5) Cuteness (but also reveal of the Conflict of the book) 40-80%
6) Misunderstanding/miscommunication and/or culmination of conflict leads to breakup 85-90%
7) Grand gesture! Triumph over evil! MC's back together, HEA 95%
8) Time jump epilogue 97%

There's nothing inherently wrong with this blueprint. However, I will note that there are two main pitfalls of it: it can get repetitive and boring, and step 6 is easy to do wrong. These are the two things that made me dislike The Unhoneymooners.

Talia Hibbert's books never feel repetitive and she never does step 6 wrong.

Get a Life, Chloe Brown is the story of chronically ill Chloe Brown deciding to start living her life outside her comfort zone after a near-death experience. Her first step? Moving into her own apartment where she meets Red, the superintendent. The two make a deal and Red agrees to help Chloe with her list in exchange for her help with creating an online presence for his art.

Both characters feel real and relatable and the plot never feels forced. Hibbert's books always make me feel just...happy. I was just sitting in bed grinning ear to ear reading this and I'm sure my roommate thinks I'm insane. Genuinely funny and joyously genuine.

ARC provided by the publisher via NetGalley

ok so I totally get why some people wouldn't love this because it is a massively complicated web of relationships between the main four characters and the fact that Joy is in love with Malcolm but falling for Fox makes it admittedly less of a by-the-books romance. none of this changes the fact that I loved it so much and all of the characters were really interesting to me and I just think there's so much going on in Malcolm and Joy's relationship specifically that I found fascinating so... five stars anyway

Edit 3/4/23: Well, you can listen to Aurora now, but for the most part, I didn't, because this book describes the characters and the music and everything so specifically and yet it still only exists in your head as a reader. No real music could ever live up to my own imagination and that's why the movie is almost never better than the book.

EDIT 5/20: IF YOU CAN, LISTEN TO THE AUDIOBOOK.

What I wouldn’t give to be able to listen to Aurora.

Anyway, I picked up this book (one I probably wouldn’t have read otherwise just bc it isn’t really my genre) because of my unending love for Evelyn Hugo.

Is Daisy Jones better than Evelyn Hugo? To me, no. But it’s a damn good book. I have a few small beefs that I’m not going to list here, but all in all, Daisy Jones was excellent.

On the one hand there’s a lot about this book that really bothers me but on the other hand I think about it constantly so idk

it's hard to find a truly unique fantasy but this was so cool and interesting even if i had some issues with the characterizations etc