A review by rachcannoli
I Believe in a Thing Called Love by Maurene Goo

3.0

I’m torn on this one. While I enjoyed it and it was extremely cute, I feel like there was not a proper comeuppance or lesson for our main character. Basically she manipulates the shit out of her man, to the point of putting his life potentially in danger twice, and that is beyond screwed up. The concept was cute until I realized she was literally going to follow the steps she’d created to the T even when she decided to stop. I knew eventually the other shoe would drop and Luca would be furious, because of course he would, but then it feels like she learned nothing when she fake freaking drowns herself! I loved the idea of her bringing his sketch to life, but she should have just chased him down n confessed then, did we need the drama? Also she says stuff like she loves him as justification for her acting insane, but c’mon. I understand her using it as a “plan” because she’s terrible at improvising, but I feel like so many times the story could have been tweaked to bring about a moral n it just didn’t. I guess losing Stanford was her penalty, but it still didn’t feel like a huge deal when she’s gonna get into a great school anyway, one conveniently closer to her bf who just forgives her n shrugs off the crazy. I don’t know, as far as far fetched plots can go I guess if you view this like the Kdramas in the book and over analyze you’ll hate it, but if you just have fun it’s a good time. I’m bad at completely turning off my brain so that’s why I’ve settled with my 3 rating haha. It might really be a 3.5 because it was a fun story and her dad was the sweetest character ever, but I don’t know, I think it missed the chance of being better than the dramas n just stuck to them a little too religiously.