stella is so personal and relatable to me. the characters were actually realistic and the struggles (both with friends + their careers) felt real. stella did not let her virginity define her despite the comments her friends would make sometimes. she's a trooper bc i would've folded immediately LOL!

the ai aspect in this book scared me. i went into it blind so i didn't even know ai was going to be involved and i hate ai so i was very wary on how it was going to be used/resolved. i'm still kind of iffy on max's stance on it because of how the end of the story went down. i do like that zakiya included the harms of ai and stella persisted with her anti-ai stance despite the company trying to force it down everyone's throats.

i will definitely be tuning in to zakiya's future releases, i had so much fun with this one!

thank you berkeley and netgalley for the arc! (:

i loved the rep in this!! there was a little bit of everything in this and i absolutely loved that. the plot reminded me of the kdrama my dearest nemesis and its was gravitated me to this book! it just wasn’t rly memorable for me and felt very ya at times and it just took me out of the story at times.

this had potential to be more but it lacked in different areas for me :( i got in a bit of a slump while reading this and i do think that affected my reading experience.

thank you st. martin’s press and netgalley for the arc.

i binged this bc i wanted to read this before i go watch this w friends on thursday but honestly i wouldn’t really have missed out on much… it was good (for the most part?) but super predictable. this might be my last attempt to get into freida mcfadden….