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written_wanderings 's review for:
Meet Cute Diary
by Emery Lee
oooh boy.
this gets a star extra for the fantastic trans rep (a trans man + a nonbinary person who uses neopronouns & is still figuring it out), because i felt it was really well done and organically written into the story. i loved devin as a character and em exploring er gender and trying different pronouns was really great to read.
but that's kind of where it ends at enjoyability for me. i did not like the main character for the majority of this book. i'm normally okay with reading a book with a main character i don't like, because there are still a lot of other redeeming qualities. and sometimes the main character being unlikable (and sometimes changes throughout the book) is the point! but here it was very much not.
noah is a self-claimed expert in romance, because he writes these sweet meet-cute stories on his tumblr blog where trans people find love. the premise was great, but the main character very quickly soured the story for me. from the moment he meets drew, who offers to fake-date him to save the meet-cute diary from being exposed as fake, noah pushes this idea onto drew that they will fall in love for real, with little to no care for how drew feels about it. because 'that's how romantic stories go'. this behavior by noah was never directly questioned or challenged on the page and it made me extremely uncomfortable.
spoilers here:
then the reveal comes that drew is only interested in noah because of the diary and turns out to be a dick. it felt like a really cheap reveal to me. i don't think i've ever met someone who would treat a person like that over a dying blog that has maybe a couple thousand followers. it just felt over the top i-need-you-to-hate-this-guy writing. it was successful, but also really cheap. drew just became a cartoon villain, instead of a guy with some toxic ideas of what relationships should be like.
spoilers end
then noah also treats his brother and best friend as expendable side characters. although they are side characters in this book, they shouldn't so obviously feel like them, let alone be treated like them by the main character. from every interaction it was clear that noah didn't care about them and only leaned on them for support, never offering it in return.
in short: devin deserved better
this gets a star extra for the fantastic trans rep (a trans man + a nonbinary person who uses neopronouns & is still figuring it out), because i felt it was really well done and organically written into the story. i loved devin as a character and em exploring er gender and trying different pronouns was really great to read.
but that's kind of where it ends at enjoyability for me. i did not like the main character for the majority of this book. i'm normally okay with reading a book with a main character i don't like, because there are still a lot of other redeeming qualities. and sometimes the main character being unlikable (and sometimes changes throughout the book) is the point! but here it was very much not.
noah is a self-claimed expert in romance, because he writes these sweet meet-cute stories on his tumblr blog where trans people find love. the premise was great, but the main character very quickly soured the story for me. from the moment he meets drew, who offers to fake-date him to save the meet-cute diary from being exposed as fake, noah pushes this idea onto drew that they will fall in love for real, with little to no care for how drew feels about it. because 'that's how romantic stories go'. this behavior by noah was never directly questioned or challenged on the page and it made me extremely uncomfortable.
spoilers here:
then the reveal comes that drew is only interested in noah because of the diary and turns out to be a dick. it felt like a really cheap reveal to me. i don't think i've ever met someone who would treat a person like that over a dying blog that has maybe a couple thousand followers. it just felt over the top i-need-you-to-hate-this-guy writing. it was successful, but also really cheap. drew just became a cartoon villain, instead of a guy with some toxic ideas of what relationships should be like.
spoilers end
then noah also treats his brother and best friend as expendable side characters. although they are side characters in this book, they shouldn't so obviously feel like them, let alone be treated like them by the main character. from every interaction it was clear that noah didn't care about them and only leaned on them for support, never offering it in return.
in short: devin deserved better