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A review by brandyrae
You're a Mean One, Matthew Prince by Timothy Janovsky
3.25
It was cute and sweet but it took 8 chapters before I cared about the main character and 12 before I cared about the romance.
And weirdly this had way too much original plot and not enough tropey goodness to be a super fun romcom but not an interesting enough plot to be super engaging and self propelled without the romance. So it was good but not terribly satisfying.
Also, while the romantic parts felt decently earned, the quick mental health turnaround did not. Like that was all definitely wish fulfillment. Something 40 year old me would write for 20 year old me so that I could believe everything would work out eventually. Which, yeah that's fine, but it felt forced and inorganic.
And another thing I thought was weird, like as a brown person, I like seeing brown people in books, especially as main characters that aren't stereotypes. But Hector was not it for me. Like his heritage was so incidental, I don't know why it was ever mentioned. I have more opinions on all that but they're hard to articulate. Just yeah, it was awkward.
I don't know. It was a good book just not a very good book.
One last thing A first edition of Don Quixote??? That would be like $2 million dollars, at least, and for both books? Plus it's so exceedingly rare it would have been on the news that it had sold. There are like 3 copies of the 1605 edition of the first book in the whole world. And Hector believes it to be a first edition and just touches it with his bare hands??? No reverence for what is considered one of the rarest books in the world not in a museum. Just of all the unbelievable things I read on the regular, this felt the most unbelievable.
And weirdly this had way too much original plot and not enough tropey goodness to be a super fun romcom but not an interesting enough plot to be super engaging and self propelled without the romance. So it was good but not terribly satisfying.
Also, while the romantic parts felt decently earned, the quick mental health turnaround did not. Like that was all definitely wish fulfillment. Something 40 year old me would write for 20 year old me so that I could believe everything would work out eventually. Which, yeah that's fine, but it felt forced and inorganic.
And another thing I thought was weird, like as a brown person, I like seeing brown people in books, especially as main characters that aren't stereotypes. But Hector was not it for me. Like his heritage was so incidental, I don't know why it was ever mentioned. I have more opinions on all that but they're hard to articulate. Just yeah, it was awkward.
I don't know. It was a good book just not a very good book.
One last thing
Content Warnings
Graphic: Panic attacks/disorders and Toxic friendship