to preface: can’t put a true star rating for this book as i dnf’ed it, but i would give it 1.5 stars.

i was so excited to read this book :/ it just seriously didn’t work for me. first of all,

this book has a cheating trope. which, as someone who almost never reads romance, i had no idea that that was a trope. ew.

also, i can appreciate that Olivie Blake wrote this from an ownvoices perspective on the bipolar representation in this, but

for a book where the point seemed to be, “Regan is fine off of her medications. they don’t let her ✨feel✨  like she wants to”, she absolutely was not stable. i just don’t get it. im reminded of a Will Wood quote (paraphrasing here, i don’t remember it exactly), where he was talking about the “medications for mental illness vs creativity” debate and said something like “does it matter more whether im making art or if im well?” (again, paraphrasing, i may be a bit off but i think that was the gist of it).

despite all this, im very happy for the people who love this book!! it just seriously does not work for me. but the .5 star is for Aldo because he and Masso are the only aspects of this book i liked. anyways i’m headcanoning Aldo as autistic bye :)

this book came so close to a 5-star for me, but

i feel like it hit a bit too on-the-nose with the biblical allegories. the snake, the garden of eden, the tree of life, adam… idk, maybe it was just the fact that i went to church so much as a kid but the allegories were explained a little too much for me personally. when it just seemed to be talking about the horrors of suburbia (and i was getting 1950s america vibes from it, honestly), i was ready to give it 5 stars right there. it was just the biblical aspects being explained too much that kinda got me

. i still really enjoyed this book, though. the writing style was beautiful :)

i liked this book alright, but found it a bit confusing. i could never really form an attachment with Ruth, or honestly any of the characters. with Ruth, we never really get a sense of what she was like before her older sister Virginia’s death.

also was it just me, or was it never said exactly what happened to Virginia? i assumed police violence because the closest mention said she was at a political protest when she died, but it was never fully mentioned. along with this, towards the end when the father’s (i dont remember his name, sorry) past arrest and Virginia apparently having smoked weed? i really feel like the news much moreso would have run with the fact that Virginia was at a protest when she died. just personally that would make more sense to me with how (especially conservative) media tends to be

.  i liked the points this book was trying to make, though! and out of all the characters, i found Ruth’s father to be the most developed and have the best character arc over the course of the story.