A review by onbewimpeld
This Is How You Remember It by Catherine Prasifka

challenging dark emotional hopeful sad fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.75

i feel like this is 2 books in 1: you have the story about growing up online

and the lovestory with lorcan. i felt the book was strongest when it described the experience of growing up online, but it does feel fitting that the focus from online to offline comes when she goes to college. i feel like this is a shared experience in getting older and existing in different spaces,  but it felt kinda off that it then turned into a love story about lorcan being the right person all along... also with him having barely an online persona and even no social media at all in the end. i still liked that it ended on a hopeful note, but i felt like the ending glossed over a lot of things, mainly the fact that she said she didn't believe men could feel love without sexual desire, and we never address this once she is with lorcan. kind of seems like a "good guy" solves this problem... same goes for evan and his implied misogyny online (maybe even incel behaviour..) and him then having a girlfriend, who is "the problem" because she flirted with lorcan and was "too clingy" with evan.

. still, the experiences catherine wrote about were heartbreaking and recognisable, and took me back to my teenage years, and i often read the book with tears forming in my eyes. i think the book would have been better if it only explored those experiences

or maybe if it had more pages to explore the love story and the "growing up" narrative, so it didn't feel as random and more embedded in the novel.