A review by armontheroad
Hello (from Here) by Chandler Baker, Wesley King

Did not finish book. Stopped at 20%.

DNF 70 pages in. This was a book I was unbelievably excited about due to the fact I met and fell in love with my partner during the pandemic. This book sounded like the perfect thing for me to latch onto and hyper-fixate about but I’m left severely disappointed by it! The meet-cute was positively awful, unmemorable, and unromantic. It was supposed to be realistic and funny, I think, but it just felt rather cheesy. Jonah is an insufferable love interest. From what I read, the generalized anxiety disorder rep is good. However, he has one conversation with Max, that does not make him entitled to information about her (love) life and no right to get jealous at the possibility of her SPEAKING to other men. Besides the fact he just goes along with his sister’s plan to cyber-stalk Max until he finds her THE NEXT DAY is just creepy. This book vividly reminds me why I do not read books by/about cishet white men. What really gets me is we’re supposed to root for and like Jonah!! I didn’t finish the book so I’m unaware if this plot point gets resolved, but the way he treats his stepmother at the start of this book is a MAJOR red flag. Men who treat their mother figures poorly…. Anyway. Jonah’s sister has Crohn’s disease, which was a nice anecdote. I actually really liked his sister Olivia, but she was not enough to keep me going through this. I was agitated there was one token friend of color. I was pissed off our white protagonist goes on a tangent about how if you “just work hard” you can make all your dreams come true…. Because the reality of life is that does not work for POC. We can work five times as hard as a white person and not move an inch because society was set up to see us fail. Of course white authors never even think about this due to their own privilege. My final comment is on the Harry Potter reference. In 2021 there is no excuse to still be writing these references into your books. Might as well write at the start of the book “Hello, I still support a racist, fatphobic, ableist, anti-semitic, transphobe and I’m proud of that!” I will not be picking this back up. I think there are better, more engaging books that I can be spending my time on, and honestly, I would advise you not to waste your time on this.