elisegmusic 's review for:

Meet Cute Diary by Emery Lee

3.0

lighthearted medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

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Meet Cute Diary is a blog where Noah has posts about made up meet-cute stories of trans people, posting them as if they’re real. When he is called out online, he decides that the best course of action is to start fake dating someone in order to bring legitimacy to the blog. 

 

I felt the characters rather frustrating in this book. Noah is sixteen in this novel, and he really does act his age. There are a lot of immature and selfish decisions he makes, and while he does grow towards the end, it was definitely hard to watch him go through this journey when you wanted to take him in hand and give him a talking to. And Noah is not the only one making poor decisions and communicating poorly through the novel. 

 

I read this book for the Trans Rights Read-a-Thon, and I do think it was a good look into life as a trans teenager. There is bullying, there is learning to choose new pronouns, there is misgendering. 

 

Overall, this book teaches us that meet cutes are not the substance of relationships - there is so much more that goes on after you meet a person, and nothing will ever go how you expect. And of course, the glamorous life you post on social media is so rarely what your life will be like in real life.