Overall I enjoyed this book. It was somewhat messy, and rather than being a story of falling in love, it was more a story of realizing they’ve been in love for a long time, which isn’t necessarily bad, just not my preference.

My biggest problem was Chloe essentially outing Shara at the beginning of the book when she tells Rory that she kissed her. She so easily could have just opened the first letter and let Shara reveal it first.

I did appreciate the representation of both conservative and progressive Christianity. I didn’t grow up in the south but I did grow up conservative Christian and while my relationship with religion now is complicated, I generally lean towards progressive Christianity, which I don’t see represented particularly often, and the depictions of both were accurate and very relatable to me.

This is a smaller note but I also appreciated the actually accurate representation of modern high school. I only graduated a few years ago and with most depictions of high school in media being written by people who graduated over a decade ago, their portrayals are usually very outdated and not relatable. The mentioning of shared Google docs to “text” in class made me really happy cause it was so commonplace when I was in high school but I’ve never seen it shown in media.

I also really enjoyed following Smith’s journey with gender. That was definitely my favorite part. And of course I loved his relationship with Rory.

This was a cheesy romance, and it could have been executed a little better, but overall it was really fun and an enjoyable reading experience, hence the four stars.