A review by wardenred
She Gets the Girl by Rachael Lippincott, Alyson Derrick

emotional hopeful slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Alex has been helping me become the person I thought you would like, but… I guess I ended up becoming, well… me.

In many ways, this was the perfect college freshman romcom with plenty of moments that made me smile and truly wonderful characters. I really felt for both leads: Alex who wore her "air-headed flirt" mask like armor, and Molly on her journey to get out of her shell and get her social anxiety under control. I loved the slow, gradual development of their relationship, how they went from mostly reluctant allies to frenemies to best friends, and that period when they were totally oblivious about falling for each other. I really loved how, while they faced such different struggles and came from such different backgrounds, they were able to see and empathize with each other's dark moments.

At the same time, I felt kind of bad for Cora, Molly's initial "dream girl," because let's face it, Alex and Molly basically manipulated her into believing Molly was a rather different person from who she really was, and then Molly had her moment of revelation just as Cora was catching feelings for a pretty fantasy. Yes, there's a nice irony here—Cora was Molly's pretty fantasy for a long while, but it's not like Cora made an actual choice to present herself as somebody she wasn't, unlike Molly. And hey, it's logical and realistic! Figuring yourself out as a teenager is a rocky road. You're bound to make mistakes and hurt others along the way. But this storyline is one of the reasons I really wish there was one more chapter or an epilogue showing the aftermath and the delayed resolution. (The other reason is that I would love a few pages of seeing Molly and Alex as an established couple.) As it was, the book ended kind of... almost abruptly.

When it comes to the two main plot strands, I feel like Molly's storyline was a little more balanced. All the parts of it—her mooning over Cora, her struggles to fit in in college, her relationships with her family and the way her Mom's internalized racism impacted her, her slowly developing feelings for Alex, her journey to becoming more assertive—painted a coherent picture. Alex's storyline seemed a little weaker in terms of structure. I really liked the parts about her mother's alcoholism, her family life, and the relationship she's built with her boss Jim. But the plotline about her now ex-girlfriend Natalie could have been handled better in terms of laying out the events. I feel like there should have been more clues that Alex wasn't the only problem in that relationship; for a while I thought Natalie was just taking their falling out really, really hard, not just... being herself. Then again, maybe that's on me and my attention span!
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