I received an eARC of this book from the publisher on NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
I wanted to love this book, a bi MC, senior year of high school, a love triangle, all of that sounded wonderful and like it would be to my taste. I unfortunately did not love this book.
I hated the friend group in this book so so much. Shannon sounded like an awful friend and reminded me a lot of the toxic friends that I’ve dropped once I realized they were awful. The description of Shannon as a gaslighting gold medalist as if that was a normal thing to say about your best friend and a totally fine trait for your closest friend to have bothered me a lot. Gia was barely in the book enough for me to form an opinion but the little she was there was enough for me to actively dislike her. Larissa, Chase, and Jasmine were all bland and felt very two dimensional, and the entire conflict of the book could have been solved had Jasmine and Larissa just had a conversation at the beginning of the book.
I’m 20, I’m two years out of high school, I should not be finding 17/18 year old characters absolutely frustrating and unable to be related to. I found myself desperate to finish this book because I was enjoying it so little, and struggling to finish it because it was filled with lines that made me close the file and walk away because I could not believe that the writing was that bad.
There were many times I questioned when the last time the author talked to a teenager was because I couldn’t find myself believing that a teenager would say things like that seeing as my friend group/peers are teenager, and I’m just barely not a teenager myself.