Tristen Menichetti

To be honest, this was one of the most cringe inducing books I have ever read in my life. I kept holding out, expecting it to get better because of the positive reviews, but I couldn’t handle it. The book has so many pop culture references that it quickly goes from relatable to overkill. The dialogue was so unnatural that it constantly took me out of the book– instead of being teenagers talking it felt like two sixty-seven year old men who googled a list of slang trying desperately to trick people on the internet into believing they were seventeen. On top of the cheesy pop culture references, the conflict was overly predictable and boring and at some points I found myself skipping pages just to get through it. It felt like no conflict was ever fleshed out and was either resolved extremely quickly of just never truly acknowledged again. The worst part for me was when Arthur found out Ben was at summer school with Hudson. It had been foreshadowed early on that this would be an issue, so naturally when the moment came, you would expect it to be intense. There’s a big blow out fight, but then the authors resort to the laziest form of conflict resolution that exists– “the accident.” It’s finding out your fiancé got in a car wreck while driving away from your argument, your ex-best friend’s mom passed away, or in this case, Dylan being hospitalized. Personally, I think this is a cop out, and it truly diminishes the conflict that the author has been alluding to for half the book. This moment just proved to me that this book is not worth the time. Overall, this book felt like something I would read on Wattpad in middle school rather than an actual published novel, and I would not recommend it to anyone over the age of twelve.