A review by moonyreadsbystarlight
Meet Cute Diary by Emery Lee

emotional funny lighthearted
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.5

This was really wonderful! This is a sweet, trope-ey YA that manages to balance in quite a few important themes and capturing specific nuances that I don't often see in other stories. This whole story is about Noah, who is in love with love and runs a blog all about trans meet cutes. When someone tries to expose his for fabricating stories, someone from a real meet cute offers to help -- but love turns out to be much more than a sweet first moment. As the story goes on, we see quite a few topics addressed relating to the trans community, being multiracial in a predomenantly white space, communication, mental health, friendship, and (of course) love. Noah is messy and brash, but really learns throughout the story. I really like the turn that this took plot-wise and what it did for the theme.

In general, I really loved the nuance that is put into this. There are a lot of details and experiences that aren't often explored, like trying new pronouns. But also, I think the blog itself is easy to overlook as maybe even a heavy-handed plot device, however I think a lot of that speaks to a broader experience of many trans people as well. Obviously it's about media representation (and the not-trans-specific experience of reactionaries on the Internet, particuarly Tumblr-brand reactionaries) but it goes beyond that. I feel like I could write an essay integrating the trans experience of existing and exploting in digital space (particularly the specific space of tumblr) and the way this peice of that story taps into that. So I won't go into all of that here. Suffice it to say, I think the auther put in a lot of nuance here.

Also, I didn't see the comparison to <i>Felix Ever After</i> in the blurb until I was done reading it, but even so I found myself thinking back to that book as I read. They're both trans characters who make brash (poor) descisions and wind up in a love triange -- but more than that, they act largely from a place of not understanding how to accept love (or not knowing what love even is). They do have quite different approaches and end up looking at different kinds of misunderstandings of love. But even so, those messy lessons were done well. I was tickled to see that it was compared to FEE when I was thinking about their similarities/differences near the end of the book.
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