This book tries so hard to be smart, it is genuinely killing me. Their post sx talk is about the political and economic state of the world. Really? Like wow. Look at these two hot, smart, almost flawless people who have sex every few pages. What a book! This can't be real. This can't be how Sally Rooney writes. It's so pretentious and performative the book feels like it wears a fedora. The characters are flat, boring, and deeply uninteresting. But at least Marianne is skinny and white!! This book is booktok slop that wears secondhand clothes and eats vegan due to ethical concerns. (Due to annoying people, the PR team has decided to revise and release a statement): Marianne and Connell have a complex relationship which is whatever yall what me to say here. It is a very good book that does not suck. They are insert opinion from Tiktok together but if the Hive Mind thinks they are blank, we will revise again! I think whatever the majority thinks and I am a bot. Please leave me be to recharge!

(Disclaimer because people in book spaces dont have literacy: I dont think Marianne should die because I dont like the way she's written. This is a character. It's not real.) Trauma as a plot can work when it's done really well. Instead of having such annoying self pitying lines. That could work if that was made to make Marianne an annoying person purposefully. But it wasn't. Because she is never framed as an annoying person by anyone despite being deeply annoying. Connell never thinks that, her friends don't, Lorraine doesn't, the book doesn't. That's definitely to the book's detriment because it could work better if she was annoying about it. If she did constantly annoy people with her perceived superiority in school, and that's why they didn't like her. If she did somewhat get on Connell's nerves when she put herself down instead of making him feel bad for her. She should have gone full Jughead Jones with the characters and made them purposely annoying about how prententious they are. It would have been a banger if she did that. (Side tangent: it would be nice if Connell had negative feelings towards her once in a while. Or maybe a differing opinion than her. Or maybe didn't like her at times. We get close to maybe being a bit mean or terrible but we back away out of cowardice.) Because victims can still be annoying people. I'm an annoying person, and my dad used to punch me too. It would have been better like that, honestly. But I don't think people would have the intelligence for it. They would probably call Sally an asshole for making her unlikable.

This book tries so hard to be smart, it is genuinely killing me. Their post sx talk is about the political and economic state of the world. Really? Like wow. Look at these two hot, smart, almost flawless people who have sex every few pages. What a book! This can't be real. This can't be how Sally Rooney writes. It's so pretentious and performative the book feels like it wears a fedora. The characters are flat, boring, and deeply uninteresting. But at least Marianne is skinny and white!! This book is booktok slop that wears secondhand clothes and eats vegan due to ethical concerns. (Due to annoying people, the PR team has decided to revise and release a statement): Marianne and Connell have a complex relationship which is whatever yall what me to say here. It is a very good book that does not suck. They are insert opinion from Tiktok together but if the Hive Mind thinks they are blank, we will revise again! I think whatever the majority thinks and I am a bot. Please leave me be to recharge!

This book disappoints me. Deeply. One of my biggest book pet peeves is a character that when their sad life is brought up, the book pauses and we have to reiterate how sad their life is and how sad we should be for them. I hate "poor baby" parts that repeat over and over and over. We know Lenore is miserable. We know her life sucks. Why must we continue to listen to this all the way til 30% and most likely beyond. And Carmilla. Why tf is she Lenore's therapist? This is CARMILLA. Did we forget what story we are retelling? I understand retellings change things, but this is so jarring it's even hard to imagine her as a vampire with how nice she is. I love lesbian stories. I am a lesbian and goth so of course I wanted to love it. But wow I wish this was good.