Reviews

You know what, I’m so glad I could give this book a true 0 stars. I’ll give it .5 because I liked Joe and his relationships with both Logan and Rosemary, which is the real driving relationship of the book. Which would be great, but this is a romcom about Logan and Rosemary, not a dramedy about an old man dying and having a death trip.

So, first off, I finally really get what people mean when they critique something for being too millennial. This book is way too fucking millennial. From all the painfully input pop culture references (who really needs to use queer celebrities in place of Oh my fucking God?) to the way so often this book feels like an advertisement (why does it matter if Logan wears Tomboyx underwear?), the humor falls extremely flat. Its clear to me Alison Cochrun is trying for that quirky relatable young humor but that kind of humor will date this badly and is not well executed.

Next, structurally, this book fucking sucks. In one 15 page chapter, there were 13 POV changes. I stopped caring whose POV started the chapter because it often gets changed midway through. Some POV shifts are two lines. There’s no room for in character immersion when we’re shoved into the next POV. What’s the point? I would have preferred an omniscient style narration because at least then we’re not calling a POV change every fucking 5 pages.

Lastly, what makes this book truly insufferable is how despite these characters being queer and neurodivergent, neither of those things are explored in truly meaningful ways. It’s either Alison Cochrun taking gay jokes and ADHD jokes and having that be proof of concept, or it’s the characters describing the experience and saying point blank “my ADHD brain” and neither of these things feel real. Which is nuts, considering Alison Cochrun is both gay and neurodivergent. Both experiences feel like a commodity instead of anything truly grounded in reality. Rosemary’s experience feels a little more realistic, but again, the language used just… kind of describes the experience rather than truly showing it?

Anyway, the romance in this was boring, especially because it seems like she wanted to do an enemies to lovers thing but was too much of a coward to show us how they were enemies as teachers or when they were in high school. So it’s really more like… a nothing to lovers. It’s boring. It’s bland. I’m a lesbian and I was more enthralled by Joe and Remy instead of the actual lesbians.