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A review by meigothic
To Sir, with Love by Lauren Layne
3.0
There are some books that feel like movies, and not in a very positive way (but don't get me wrong, I def. love movies, and rom com movies... just on my own terms, for lack of a better way to express it?? LMAO), and this is one of them to me. My definition of "books that feel like movies" in this case is where it feels like I'm only getting the surface level of characters and not much depth, and that the pacing of the events are akin to those of a movie, rather than a book. On top of that, dialogue feels more like a crafted screenplay than natural speech. It makes sense. To Sir, With Love is an homage to You've Got Mail, and it's one of my favorite movies and tropes which is why I picked it up in the first place. These kinds of books that "feel like movies" to me are always kind of hit or miss. And here, it was a bit of a miss.
There were definitely some cute moments. It's got a funny and unfortunate meet cute, it's got some epistolary romance vibes -- but again, the tone and even diction of their texts didn't really feel natural to me. Even all of Gracie's dialogue with her siblings felt a little stiff. To be honest, I also just didn't really feel the chemistry most of the time, and that definitely hurt it. One of the best things about epistolary romances is that the text messages/letters, etc. give a lot of insight to the characters and also build up a great camaraderie and just pure attraction through the vulnerability, but here, the messages didn't really add much to those vibes for me at all. Gracie and Sebastian's best moments were obviously in-person, but the buildup didn't really add up. It kind of felt like there was just an awkward jump from the enemies to lovers simply because of Gracie's preconceived notions of "finding the one" and her believing it was him immediately. Which is also kind of the point BUT STILL.
There were definitely some cute moments. It's got a funny and unfortunate meet cute, it's got some epistolary romance vibes -- but again, the tone and even diction of their texts didn't really feel natural to me. Even all of Gracie's dialogue with her siblings felt a little stiff. To be honest, I also just didn't really feel the chemistry most of the time, and that definitely hurt it. One of the best things about epistolary romances is that the text messages/letters, etc. give a lot of insight to the characters and also build up a great camaraderie and just pure attraction through the vulnerability, but here, the messages didn't really add much to those vibes for me at all. Gracie and Sebastian's best moments were obviously in-person, but the buildup didn't really add up. It kind of felt like there was just an awkward jump from the enemies to lovers simply because of Gracie's preconceived notions of "finding the one" and her believing it was him immediately. Which is also kind of the point BUT STILL.