- Rating: 3 out 5 stars
I kind of wanted to rate it lower but this bok did make me smile a couple of times, so I am going to give it a three. I just don’t even know where to start. This book was so predictable (and we’ll get into that later) and unbelievably corny, ugh. I really wanted to like it, but God, I didn’t. At all.
In this book, we follow the story of Liz, her childhood crush moves back into her hometown again after many years of not seeing him. A lot has happened since she last saw him. Her mom passed away, her neighbor and her fight all the time over a parking spot on the street, she has become best friends with a girl that wasn’t so friendly towards her when they were little. But anyway, I derail. Liz knows she’s not over her crush so she asks her infuriating neighbor Wes to help her win her crush over in exchange for a permanent stay at the parking spot. Wes agrees wholeheartedly as long as he gets the parking spot. So they start a fake-dating relationship of sorts where Wes tries to get her with Michael (her crush), but the more time she spends with Wes, the less she starts thinking about Michael.
And that’s it, that’s the story really. You can imagine everything else that happens in the book. It is so predictable. Honestly from page one, I knew who she going to end up with because of the way she described him. I rolled my eyes about 200 times reading this book. It was so annoying. It doesn’t help that Liz loves rom-coms and chick-flicks (there’s nothing wrong with that because I love them too and I’m a romantic at heart) because it quite literally follows all the stereotypes you can think of in a romantic movie. This book lacks substance, so much substance. I really can’t tell you how boring this story was and it was 200 pages too long.
Furthermore, the enemies-to-lovers trope in this book was so painfully obvious it didn’t leave any room for the imagination. You know when you’re reading a love triangle (a good one anyway) it’s really hard to tell who the MC is going to end up with. Not on this book. I believe that she was describing her enemy with the most absurd descriptions from chapter one and I couldn’t help but roll my eyes, knowing damn well that’s the guy she’s going to end with. Moreover, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen this story. It’s just a repeat of something I’ve read so many times that I honestly can’t believe the publishers went with it. Another thing is if they “slammed the door,” one more time–I swear, the author has never heard of closing a door in her entire life. They were slamming doors for no reason like the situation didn’t even seem tense or agitated for them to be slamming so many doors. On the other hand, the author really seemed like she had never met a teenager in real life because wow, the dialogue between these characters was so cringy.
Liz, the MC, annoyed me to no end. I can’t really talk about her grief because I have never experienced grief like hers (thank God) so I won’t. But what I will talk about is the unnecessary lying. She was lying up and down for no purpose at all. I do get that as a teenager is harder to communicate the truth because you’re at such a vulnerable age and you’re so afraid of what people may think of you, but trust me, nothing good comes from lying as Liz saw in this book.
Anyways, read this book if you like authors like Morgan Martson, Jenn Bennett, Julie Buxbaum, Jennifer Niven, etc. Thank you guys for reading my post. I truly appreciate it. 14+ readers can read this book.
