I wanted to like this book so badly and on the surface I think it’s a sweet story. Digging deeper, I was frankly sort of triggered by the book - which is absolutely a personal thing so I understand why others might enjoy it. 

Cath’s relationship with her dad made my chest tight. While mental illness is so real and absolutely a reason to worry about a parent or loved one, the way Cath takes care of her dad struck me as parenting your parent and it hurt me. I desperately wanted Cath to live her life and have a healthy relationship with her dad but time and again she stepped away from being her own person to care for him. 

I also just found Cath unlikeable at times. Her investment in a fandom was cringey to me (and this is coming from someone who wrote a Glee fanfic that had a few thousand hits), and it frustrated me to no end that Harry Potter exists in a universe where Simon Snow is being written. Cath is naive to an alarming degree, and when she

tells Levi she hasn’t written her rewrite for her fiction class, I almost blew a gasket.<\spoiler> I almost liked Wren better but maybe because I sympathized a bit with her. 

I love Rainbow Rowell so I certainly won’t stop reading her books, but this one just wasn’t it for me.