This is part of a review that I saw on goodreads and I wanna leave this here to go back to it whenever I think about why I hate the queer representation of this series, because I swear it's starting to piss me off more and more "Delilah had some problems with performative language, but remained readable. Astrid was hard not to roll your eyes at. Iris tripled down on the bad aspects. I'm honestly surprised that there are not many reviews pointing it out... Representation is this book is borderline offensive, at best it's insincere. At best. I've made my point in my review of Astrid Parker that the way AHB writes about queerness is weirdly uniform, in a cool-kids-club way, a way that seems perplexed at the idea of genuine diversity and is only capable of treating it as a background. It somehow got worse. It all feels very juvenile and naive. Women in their 30's who are out for years are naming their groupchats "Cheers for Queers" and get starry eyed seeing a coffee drink named "Pansexual Pistachio Cold Brew". Trans people are used as props for the author or the characters to pat themselves on the back for how inclusive they are. "In the play it's two men, one of them is trans" "I love that" say the two cis characters, using a man's identity to make themselves feel progressive. I'm sure he's happy about that. The book doesn't even give the poor guy any lines, but makes a point to mention him again, this time by the narrator: "It was two gay men - one of them trans(...)". WE ALREADY KNOW. Any characters who are more diverse than the main cast (i.e not cis, thin, white) are used as a throwaway line, they don't even show up ("Phoebe was a trans woman and a costume designer" "Tori was a Black lesbian"). Nuh-uh! You don't get to use their identities like that if you don't put any work into involving them as PEOPLE. (There is Stevie's nonbinary friend I guess, but they lack any depth and are also introduced as an identity checkbox, and those identities also apparently make them "the single coolest person Stevie knew"). Inclusion as performance. You can see it in small details; like: "What about them? Ren said pointing to a white woman with long blond hair" (what's the point of using a neutral pronoun if you're gonna assume this person's gender in the same sentence lmao). Or Stevie buying a lesbian flag coloured swimsuit at 17 (11 years ago), despite sunset lesbian flag being invented in 2018. It might seem nitpicky but it paints a larger picture all combined together. It makes it seem like the author isn't really interested in portraying queerness as anything else than stereotypes. And it DOES bleed into the view or relationships and romance. I found it quite concerning how sapphic relationships are depicted... Those that work out are described as never-ending honeymoon phases where they constantly have "48h orgasm sessions" and forever behave as if they'd just met. The ones that fall apart do so because they have less sex and fall into behaving like roommates. Relationships are not just waiting for a magical person that will make you feel teenage love all the time. In real relationships, there will be problems and there will be the mundane, and it's a conscious act of love to make everyday life exciting. Stevie and Iris are required to "work" on themselves and improve their behaviour, but only to the point of "getting the girl" - the ultimate end goal. Once it's achieved, long-term relationships (like Claire and Delilah's) don't seem to require any effort and any sign of work to be done on the relationship is meant to be taken as if the relationship is doomed."

Honestly really liking Stevie so far!! And also starting to get fond of Iris way more in this book, didn't love her in the previous two

I'm loving the anxiety rep