enjoy my releasing 10 review that i can’t yet post because goodreads is not letting people rate it:
chloe walsh has lost the plot.
the first 250 pages of this book take place before the two narrators hit double digits, a decision that doesn’t make any fucking sense considering that they speak the exact same way they do a decade later. what is the point of having hundreds of pages worth of flashbacks if you are going to simply have the two main characters speak the same exact way they do a decade later. why not just have flashbacks throughout modern day like she does with gibsie.
there is something so disrespectful about the way that other members of the friend group are treated. like it’s disrespectful that patrick, hughie’s alleged best friend before lizzie, is given like one three page scene alone with hughie and we’re given the smallest glimpse into his life and after that the only other time we get anything close to that is when it’s revealed that feely asked lizzie out and hughie gets pissy. shit if i was patrick where everyone acts like i’m invisible at every group hangout i’d ask out lizzie too! and patrick isn’t even characterized as being quiet - it’s just that everyone else around him is too wrapped up in their own shit to care! like how the hell am i supposed to root for hughie, the most emotionally intelligent eleven year old to exist, when he doesn’t even make an effort to include patrick in literally anything. my main point of comparison is johnny/gibsie, whose dynamic is given so much time and care during both of their books because they are each other’s best friends and even in a romance it gets so boring and repetitive to have the two love interests spend every second together.
also the way that claire and gibsie, but ESPECIALLY claire, are written literally comes off like chloe walsh hates her. it’s one thing for hughie to be annoyed by his little sister but another for lizzie to constantly demean her behind her back. this characterization feels so mean-spirited because we as readers know what’s happening to gibsie!! like lizzie, he is a child desperately trying to hang onto what is left of his innocence. and yet we still have repeated mentions from both hughie/lizzie about how supposedly naive their friends are, not helped by the fact that claire is given zero depth in her own book. claire literally doesn't realize her best friend is traumatized until she reads it in writing and it all feels MEAN. she is purposefully kept in the dark about her best friend’s mental problems (by lizzie herself!) because lizzie assumes that she is too immature to handle them. but don’t worry, hughie, the most emotionally intelligent eleven year old on the planet, manages to wrap his head around the complexities of bipolar disorder because it’s in the name of love. hughie’s characterization is also so frustrating because he’s nothing but a more perfect version of johnny. it’s like chloe walsh wanted to one-up everyone’s favorite boy (including me) so if johnny’s the best athlete, well hughie’s great at all the different sports he plays! and he’s smart and likes to read! and he’s single-handedly keeping his girlfriend from killing herself because a trip to the library told him more about his emotional issues than licensed doctors! hughie has ZERO SUBSTANCE it’s honestly kind of funny. and i know it’s chloe walsh’s schtick to have the savior-saved dynamic but my GOD at least johnny had his injury and aoife had her pregnancy! all the biggs do all day is sit around and worry about their best friends/significant others.
this is all without even mentioning the absolute trauma porn pervading this book. if one bad thing happened to shannon, then three bad things happened to lizzie. if joey struggled for years, then lizzie struggled for a decade. if gibsie went through the same trauma as lizzie, then lizzie went through it more. i understand that chloe walsh heavily based lizzie’s story off her own, to which i say stop hiding behind your self-insert whenever valid criticism comes your way. this book is controversial not because of the heavy subjects handled but because of the callous way those subjects are handled. seriously where is a single responsible adult in this book?? at least with johnny and shannon’s codependency mammy k was there to actually put some sense into him and tell the audience that chloe walsh doesn’t believe that a high schooler should solely be responsible for the emotional and physical wellbeing of their partner. because as much as chloe walsh wants you to forget, these are CHILDREN. lizzie and hughie deserve a writer who is not blinded by the prospect of having her self-insert be saved by a rugby lad to treat their characters and stories with respect and care.
