I have such conflicted feelings about this book. In some ways, I liked it much more than the first. Wes's POV was everything he was so down bad for Liz the entire book. Like, this is basically just a whole book of him being obsessed with her, and I'm not complaining about that.

I know a lot of people were upset at the idea of Liz and Wes breaking up and not just letting us imagine them happily together, and while I think that's valid, I think the breakup made sense. But I feel like a lot of people who LOVED the first one aren't going to love this one and might be better off just reading the road trip short story Lynn added to her website because this almost felt like a completely separate book, like a really fun college sports second chance romance with lots of pining, but not quite the sequel to BTTM.

Personally, I was here for the breakup plotline. It was like picking up a second chance romance where you have an entire first book of the couple's relationship before the breakup. The whole thing with the second chance trope is it's a couple that should have worked out but sometimes life gets in the way. So I don't think the breakup ruins them or their dynamic, and the reasoning for their breakup, and the subsequent changes, felt in-character to me. I mean, Wes spent the entire last book putting Liz before his happiness. Literally, that's what the promposal moment was. So Wes's actions make complete sense to me (and he was also going through a really hard time, so it's not like he'd be thinking through a super-rational lens).

Liz's character change in this also made sense to me. Her entire worldview was centered on romance and being a hopeless romantic, and even though that was shifted a bit in the last book because she realized that life didn't play out exactly like the romcom plotline she'd constructed for herself, she still ended up getting all the things she dreamed about, this whirlwind love and grand romantic gestures and this person she got matching tattoos and saved a cat with. For anyone, that would be a big deal, but for someone who's spent their whole life putting love on a pedestal? And then for that to fall apart and for "the love of her life" to utterly break her heart? Yeah, I can completely understand being anti-romance after that. It's very, very normal to go through phases of your life, especially as you're growing up, where you want to reject everything from your past and show that you've changed, especially in college, and ESPECIALLY after someone significant in your life hurts you.

That being said, I think maybe Painter went a bit too far in making her act different because she almost didn't feel like the same character, and there were these weird "she's so chill" and "she's one of the guys" narratives throughout. Like, "She watches football on the weekends instead of romcoms, isn't she so cool now?" And then we never get to see her start reclaiming some of the old pieces of herself. I'm not at all saying she needed to be high school Liz again, because that wouldn't even be realistic, but more of an older blend of the two. Maturing is sometimes getting past those periods of throwing out everything from your past self, learning to love pieces of younger you, and figuring out what's healthy to leave behind and what you actually never needed to "grow out of." Like, in this instance, dressing up in unique clothes and watching romcoms. I kept waiting for us to reach that point with Liz, but then that never came. Liz's character shift will probably be the most upsetting for big fans of the first book, so just a warning there.

The writing felt much more mature in this one, and even though the first made me feel for the characters, this one had me wanting to cry at so many points. Especially when we see how much has changed over the years, it left me with this intense ache and nostalgia. I loved the friend group in this and the little college found family they formed, I loved Sarah and the way she supported Wes, and the way Liz's family supported her.

So while this book felt off at times and had some weird choices added in, this was still a fun time with so much pining that made me feel all the butterflies while still maintaining an emotional undercurrent.

Thank you to NetGalley, Simon and Schuster Children's Publishing, and Lynn Painter for the ARC of this book!