A review by misha_ali
If You Still Recognise Me by Cynthia So

4.0

I enjoyed this well enough but there were a few things that made it significantly less enjoyable for me than it could have been.

First, Joan should have been fleshed out more. Even by the end, despite periodic dry updates on how her crusade to win over her dad along with her stepmother towards being at least less homophobic, I didn't really have much of an idea of her as a person.

Second, the subplot with Ritika

Spoiler

having a crush on Elsie for all of two minutes and then being completely over it and fine was very strange. This would have been a more meaningful conflict for me if Ritika had pointed out that Elsie was being a poor best friend and she felt sidelined in favor of her old friend just popping up and being invited on their best friends end of school trip together, not to mention the additional mission of finding Elsie's internet crush's grandmother's old friend during the trip. It would legitimately have been a plot point for Elsie's growth as a person and friend to be less self-absorbed and focus a bit more on her friend and what she needs. Suddenly having Ritika question her sexuality because of Elsie and then get over it immediately after seems like forced conflict to me and very unnatural in the pace of the story.

I enjoyed the book overall but Elsie's POV doesn't work for me because she's incredibly self-involved so we don't really get to flesh out other characters as much as I would have liked to see.