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Meet Cute Diary
by Emery Lee
Noah’s entitlement, shallowness, and childish rudeness could be grating. It wasn’t fun, catty meanness when he was being judgmental and nasty to someone who only seemed to be sweet and genuine or to people who were supportive and giving a lot to him. He was a teenager, and it felt like age-appropriate behavior. And, obviously, it was the setup for his character development, but I don’t know if he really changed enough for me to not still be put off by it at the end of the book. Noah never really did become a better friend to Becca. He wasn’t doing anything really horrible; he just never stopped doing the same things that drove her away (making everything about himself, snapping at her instead of dealing with his own emotions). To some degree, it probably felt like that because this is Noah’s story. But they had a conversation about how one-sided their friendship had become; Noah agreed it was a problem, but then it was right back to her doing grand gestures for him with no reciprocation. Nothing was any better for her. There must have been some way to show actual change from Noah in that relationship if that was the intent. At least in Noah’s relationship with Devin, it started to feel a little more even though e still had to be a lot more mature, patient, and giving all the time than Noah ever managed in return.
Despite the cute cover and setup, this story was more about toxic relationships and developing realistic expectations and boundaries for romantic relationships than it was about the fluffy side of romance. That definitely contributed to my sense that Noah’s toxic behaviors weren’t addressed as well as they should have been. Drew was blatant in his creepiness – he’s manipulative, he was jealous and controlling, he disregarded Noah’s interests and feelings. He used the fake dating scenario to push their relationship forward without talking about it or setting boundaries, to get Noah to accept things he was uncomfortable with, and to make Noah feel trapped. Noah was inexperienced, yearning, and definitely had some level of fear that he wouldn’t find love, so he was willing to fit everything Drew did into the script he’d created for How Romance Should Go, whether or not he was actually happy. I found that to be written fairly well. Drew is no master manipulator or villain; he’s just also a self-absorbed asshole who keeps leaning into it until he goes from kind of creepy to emotionally abusive. But if the story was all about figuring out what is acceptable and healthy in a relationship, I wanted that to come through as strongly in all the relationships.
For the queer representation, I did appreciate the more complicated gender journey we saw from Devin. Noah seemed to have had a pretty straightforward relationship with his gender – he’s a binary trans boy who came out as such and started transitioning before the story began. Devin, on the other hand, had come out as a trans girl at first before realizing that didn’t feel quite right for em. E started the story using he/him pronouns and later experimented with they/them and neopronouns as well as with eir gender presentation. Through em, there was a conversation about the unique discomfort and confusion of coming out as one thing before realizing it’s wrong and struggling with where to go from there.