it’s like they turned the saturation up to 11 on the quirk scale and tried to include as many overdone romance tropes as possible (in an extreme and unbelievable fashion). I’m all here for an “unlikeable” heroine who goes through some character development, but Hazel was on another level. Josh was an extremely boring character who was never really developed (other than reminding us that he’s Korean and name-dropping some random Korean tidbits every time his family is mentioned). Their friendship developed way too quickly to be believable (and how did Hazel not know Emily was his sister??? was he not invited to her wedding and thus in the photos???). There was little, if any, character development from anyone. Hazel remained very emotionally immature. 

There were some warning red flags along the way (drunken sex not being a consent issue, laughing at a side character’s alcoholism/sobriety, a cheap trans joke, having a fetish for Josh speaking Korean, etc), but the ending (which I saw coming, too!) threw all the goodwill I had towards this book in the toilet. They never really had a discussion about it! Also, miscarriage shouldn’t be a cliffhanger for the epilogue — we needed at least a few more chapters in the present day for them to talk things through, not a jump to three years in the future!