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A review by thebooknerdscorner
Meet Cute Diary by Emery Lee
3.0
A slow burn queer romance with a complicated love triangle featuring an online blog about trans people finding their happily ever afters.
Noah Ramirez's life revolves around love and the formula of romance. As a sixteen year old teen, he has plenty of time to pour into his blog, Meet Cute Diary, which is filled to the brim with fictional accounts of trans teens falling in love. He also believes that romance happens in a twelve step equation that is showcased in pretty much every form of media ever. The problem with all of this is: it's not real. Things start not looking great for Noah when people online start to realize this. When a troll starts their own blog presenting cold facts on why Noah's stories can't be true, Noah is desperate to find a solution that will save face. The answer practically runs into him when he stumbles upon Drew, a hot guy that works at a local bookstore who just happens to be a super fan of the blog. Noah and Drew soon devise a scheme to fake date one another and share their relationship with readers in the hopes of restoring faith in the power of meet cutes and love itself. As Noah and Drew's relationship deepens, Noah is shocked to find that romance is much harder in real life than it is in romance novels.
The first third of this book was practically unbearable to read. Noah is such a brat, and spending so much time with him was really raining on my parade. Not only does he live in the clouds ninety-nine percent of the time, but he is also incredibly selfish and blinded by his never-ending pursuit for the chance to fall head over heels in love at first sight. BOO! All of these traits are incredibly annoying and make for a truly unlikeable main character. I'm going to get a bit specific here about a couple of things, so feel free to skip the next paragraph if that bothers you at all.
One of the things that really teed me off was how selfish Noah's financial decisions are. His parents gave him a credit card to feed himself when his brother was away from home and he literally used it to buy anything he could think of. He spent over four hundred dollars in a matter of days on pointless things like buying ice cream, books, and coffee all in the hopes that he would stumble into a cute guy that he could swoon over. He also decided that he needed to hire a rideshare to get to all of these places rather than walk a couple of blocks, so he was spending money like there was no tomorrow. And then he was shocked when his mom froze the card! The gall of this kid is truly astounding (he's sixteen, by the way), and this made the beginning third of the book when he was moping around by himself so excruciatingly painful.
Also, all of Noah's logic surrounding his blog is so skewed. Did it really matter if the stories were fictional? People find relief and satisfaction in Hallmark movies all the time, but that doesn't make them anywhere close to true. Fictional stories can move people just as much as real ones if done well, therefore it doesn't even make sense that Noah felt so obligated to convince everyone that his stories were real. And the fact that he didn't open his blog up for people to submit their stories from page one of this book actually had me groaning because the solution was so obvious.
Things started to get a bit better when Noah met Drew, but honestly, he gave me pretty shady vibes from the get-go. Part of me was hoping that they would fall for each other for real because they both seem like such awful people who deserve one another. I'm never a fan of fake dating; it is too dishonest for me to enjoy much. Since this book was drowning in lies, I found it hard to like pretty much any element of it.
Then enters Devin and my thoughts on this book changed quite a bit. Devin goes by many pronouns throughout this book so for the sake of clarity, I going to refer to em using the e/eir pronouns. Devin is the type of character that I eat up in every way. E is truly a darling who loves comic books, Starbucks coffee, and spending time with the kids that e gets to watch during summer camp. E is also a nervous bean who is often afflicted by panic attacks and extreme amounts of anxiety (which I can't help but relate to). Panic attacks are no fun, so I can totally see why Devin felt e needed to apologize for them every time that they happened to em in public. If this sweet nonbinary finey did not grace the pages of this book, it definitely would have been a two star read and I would have hated pretty much every second of it. Devin is definitely too good for Noah, but e is pretty much the perfect love interest to read about.
I like how this book also handled the topics of gender identity. Noah starts this book as an out trans boy who is ready to live his life, but Devin is much more confused about eir identity. Literally, this human goes through all the pronouns in this book, which e has every right to if that's what it takes to feel comfortable in eir skin. Noah's family does still forget about Noah's transition from time to time, but they are very gracious about their slipups. And luckily, this is like the only thing that Noah isn't super selfish about; he actually makes jokes about his family's slips of the tongue.
I haven't much more to say about this book besides the fact that it would have been nice if it was a tad shorter. I could see about fifty percent of readers DNFing this book before it actually gets good due to Noah's personality alone. If there would have been less wallowing in the beginning, I'm sure more readers would make it to the end and actually get to experience some of Noah's growth. Granted it may make the pay off at the end a tad less gratifying, but what's the point of gratification if most people abandon the book before they get to that part?
Overall, "Meet Cute Diary" was definitely not the super cute, fluffy romance that I wanted it to be. I found Noah to be so grating on my nerves and Drew was a possessive creep that I just couldn't get behind. The fact that I didn't like most of the main characters took away the appeal of this book, but at least Devin swooped in and saved the day with eir awkwardness and anxious vibes; I don't know if I would have made it through this book without em. I'll probably give this author's books another try, but I will be cautiously optimistic about the odds of me enjoying them.
Noah Ramirez's life revolves around love and the formula of romance. As a sixteen year old teen, he has plenty of time to pour into his blog, Meet Cute Diary, which is filled to the brim with fictional accounts of trans teens falling in love. He also believes that romance happens in a twelve step equation that is showcased in pretty much every form of media ever. The problem with all of this is: it's not real. Things start not looking great for Noah when people online start to realize this. When a troll starts their own blog presenting cold facts on why Noah's stories can't be true, Noah is desperate to find a solution that will save face. The answer practically runs into him when he stumbles upon Drew, a hot guy that works at a local bookstore who just happens to be a super fan of the blog. Noah and Drew soon devise a scheme to fake date one another and share their relationship with readers in the hopes of restoring faith in the power of meet cutes and love itself. As Noah and Drew's relationship deepens, Noah is shocked to find that romance is much harder in real life than it is in romance novels.
The first third of this book was practically unbearable to read. Noah is such a brat, and spending so much time with him was really raining on my parade. Not only does he live in the clouds ninety-nine percent of the time, but he is also incredibly selfish and blinded by his never-ending pursuit for the chance to fall head over heels in love at first sight. BOO! All of these traits are incredibly annoying and make for a truly unlikeable main character. I'm going to get a bit specific here about a couple of things, so feel free to skip the next paragraph if that bothers you at all.
One of the things that really teed me off was how selfish Noah's financial decisions are. His parents gave him a credit card to feed himself when his brother was away from home and he literally used it to buy anything he could think of. He spent over four hundred dollars in a matter of days on pointless things like buying ice cream, books, and coffee all in the hopes that he would stumble into a cute guy that he could swoon over. He also decided that he needed to hire a rideshare to get to all of these places rather than walk a couple of blocks, so he was spending money like there was no tomorrow. And then he was shocked when his mom froze the card! The gall of this kid is truly astounding (he's sixteen, by the way), and this made the beginning third of the book when he was moping around by himself so excruciatingly painful.
Also, all of Noah's logic surrounding his blog is so skewed. Did it really matter if the stories were fictional? People find relief and satisfaction in Hallmark movies all the time, but that doesn't make them anywhere close to true. Fictional stories can move people just as much as real ones if done well, therefore it doesn't even make sense that Noah felt so obligated to convince everyone that his stories were real. And the fact that he didn't open his blog up for people to submit their stories from page one of this book actually had me groaning because the solution was so obvious.
Things started to get a bit better when Noah met Drew, but honestly, he gave me pretty shady vibes from the get-go. Part of me was hoping that they would fall for each other for real because they both seem like such awful people who deserve one another. I'm never a fan of fake dating; it is too dishonest for me to enjoy much. Since this book was drowning in lies, I found it hard to like pretty much any element of it.
Then enters Devin and my thoughts on this book changed quite a bit. Devin goes by many pronouns throughout this book so for the sake of clarity, I going to refer to em using the e/eir pronouns. Devin is the type of character that I eat up in every way. E is truly a darling who loves comic books, Starbucks coffee, and spending time with the kids that e gets to watch during summer camp. E is also a nervous bean who is often afflicted by panic attacks and extreme amounts of anxiety (which I can't help but relate to). Panic attacks are no fun, so I can totally see why Devin felt e needed to apologize for them every time that they happened to em in public. If this sweet nonbinary finey did not grace the pages of this book, it definitely would have been a two star read and I would have hated pretty much every second of it. Devin is definitely too good for Noah, but e is pretty much the perfect love interest to read about.
I like how this book also handled the topics of gender identity. Noah starts this book as an out trans boy who is ready to live his life, but Devin is much more confused about eir identity. Literally, this human goes through all the pronouns in this book, which e has every right to if that's what it takes to feel comfortable in eir skin. Noah's family does still forget about Noah's transition from time to time, but they are very gracious about their slipups. And luckily, this is like the only thing that Noah isn't super selfish about; he actually makes jokes about his family's slips of the tongue.
I haven't much more to say about this book besides the fact that it would have been nice if it was a tad shorter. I could see about fifty percent of readers DNFing this book before it actually gets good due to Noah's personality alone. If there would have been less wallowing in the beginning, I'm sure more readers would make it to the end and actually get to experience some of Noah's growth. Granted it may make the pay off at the end a tad less gratifying, but what's the point of gratification if most people abandon the book before they get to that part?
Overall, "Meet Cute Diary" was definitely not the super cute, fluffy romance that I wanted it to be. I found Noah to be so grating on my nerves and Drew was a possessive creep that I just couldn't get behind. The fact that I didn't like most of the main characters took away the appeal of this book, but at least Devin swooped in and saved the day with eir awkwardness and anxious vibes; I don't know if I would have made it through this book without em. I'll probably give this author's books another try, but I will be cautiously optimistic about the odds of me enjoying them.