rating: 3.75/5
i was really into the first half of this book. i love me some academia and relationship drama with a protagonist who reminds me so much of myself. at first i really thought this book was going to go back and forth between sam and yash in a Normal People or Past Lives-esque love triangle. while i was right about the Past Lives part, i was wrong about a definitive love triangle. i love a lot about this book. but i don't like how the pacing falls off after the paris-new york arc. i mean cmon we did not need to spend so long in the hospital. surely there were better ways for that last part to have been executed. also i absolutely was not aware that the main character once again was casey fuckin peabody. dear lord. i didn't know that until silas was namedropped and i immediately dug up old buried memories of him in Writers and Lovers and positively lost it. this book is basically a retcon because to my unreliable knowledge, there was absolutely no mention of casey's life before her being in boston in the entirety of Writers and Lovers. this book should be listed as a sequel to Writers and Lovers tbh. but anyways, i digress. i liked the thread of sam being a religious christian and as a fairly religious person myself i was very interested in exploring that aspect in the beginning but unfortunately that specific aspect of sam's identity isn't honored in this book because modern sensibilities don't fuck well with religion and his want to stick by his belief in god is othered in this book, and he loses his belief by the end of the book too. i also didn't like how casey deadass kept delaying her flight to go be with her SICK CHILD and instead stuck around yash for that long. i kinda get it but girl c'mon. but some good things include how yash was flustering me in the beginning. he's an enigmatic character in all this and a tragic case (got wasted like all his potential). this man is what i fear i'll become. i told abby that even tho he was surrounded by people who loved and cared about him in his deathbed he was still so alone because sam might've been the only person who truly understood him and casey the only person to have loved him like that. ugh. so many feelings. casey being pregnant with his kid absolutely killed me too. i was horrified. nightmare for sure. live love laugh silas tho. he's the goat. also i love casey's kids. they're adorable.
