this was quite fun, but sometimes it did drag out in my opinion. the characters were wild, but it was very entertaining to follow them. sometimes the story got really deep and it treated heavy subjects, which I appreciated.

Story of my Life is a book that isn’t meant to be taken seriously. It’s goofy, silly, at times a little ridiculous but that’s also what makes it so entertaining and funny.

I really enjoyed how the sibling relationship between Cam, Levi, Gage and Laura was shown and just how realistic it felt. From bickering with your siblings to insulting them in their face and praising them behind their back, being annoyed with them 24/7 but also be willing to do anything and everything for them. It was such a funny dynamic to read and made the characters a little more real.

The chemistry between Hazel and Cam was a little lacking imo and most of their romantic/sexual interactions didn’t feel natural nor like they were driven by love and sometimes not even lust. Some of their moments together came a little out of nowhere without any thoughts first about how they felt about each other before actually making whatever moves. Even at the end of the book, I still don’t think there was a clear indication of why Hazel and Cam liked each other romantically, besides just being sexually attracted to each other.

I think a big reason for this is because the book tries a little too hard to be a comedy. I did really enjoy the humor present and I laughed quite a bit, but a lot of times it prioritizes making the characters act funny and say funny things and lighten the mood with jokes rather than expand on the emotional connection between the characters and focus on individual character development.

I would usually hate with a burning passion a grumpy mmc that can be rude, pushy and possessive, but I actually didn’t mind Cam too much here. It helped that the fmc doesn’t get swayed by this, she’s always ready to match his tone or just completely ignore him and that created an interesting dynamic with a fun banter. Though I still didn’t like how he always felt the need to jump to conclusions and resolve problems with fighting, that just felt immature.

Hazel does suffer a little from “not like other girls” syndrome, but I didn’t really feel like it was too predominant for her as a characters to the point of not liking her because of it. A lot of times she’s different, but in an interesting way or making me question and be interested in knowing how she’ll solve her conflicts in her own way. She’s also very resilient, ready to communicate instead of leaving things unsaid, and I really appreciated that about her.

As expected, this did not need to be 500 pages long. There’s a lot of repetition of same conversations over and over again, I felt like the pacing was a little slow and focused too much on some scenes that didn’t need to be that long, conflicts that went on for so long with no reason for it. This really affected how I felt about the book in the end cause it just started to get tiring to read.

ok I have a lot of opinions about this book but let’s start with the positives: it was honestly a very fun and light read. It’s very much your typical hate-to-love romance with miscommunication and misunderstandings and at times very absurd but I also think that’s what made it so entertaining. I was always expecting something ridiculous to happen to add fire to the drama and see where the characters would take it, and how that’d impact Joonie as someone in the middle of a romance but also someone on a journey.

Along with Joonie’s story, we’re given excerpts of the romantasy book that Joonie’s life revolves around - A Tale of Salt Water & Secrets - and I’m not gonna lie, there was a point where I was a lot more invested in this story than of the main character. There’s an element of satire in the romantasy sections, with even the author saying she’s choosing to parody these parts, and using every common and cliche trope we’re used to seeing in fantasy romance books that make these so popular, and it’s this absurdity that made reading these sections so fun.

With the main story of the book… I just didn’t feel the same. I was very hopeful with the author’s note, where Iman Hariri-Kia mentions the discrimination that romance readers get, how they have this awful reputation that they only read for smut, that it’s not real reading and that romance readers are delusional, when in reality romance novels can be a way to escape but also for people to understand themselves and their sexuality when their own education fails to help in that, which I agree with. However, the author fails to make Joonie follow these lines and instead turns her into the stereotype she’s trying to go against. She’s delusional and obsessed and a crazy fan, which until here I wasn’t minding, it’s a very realistic portray of some people in fandoms and that’s completely fine, it was even interesting how the author decided to lean into that aspect, but it’s the actions she takes and the way she thinks that take her to an absurd level.

You can’t make your character complain that people don’t take her seriously because they think she can’t distinguish fiction from reality and then make her take actions where she does not, in fact, know where the line is between fiction and reality. She’s constantly comparing her life to the book she’s obsessed with, how the people in her life parallel with the characters, I mean she’s literally stalking someone that she doesn’t know and that the person doesn’t know her just because it inspired her favorite character and she wants to romance that person. It just doesn’t work when you’re trying to prove a point and the main character does the exact opposite of what you’re trying to prove.

I understand this is supposed to be satire and there’s a lot that happens that goes in line with that, but there’s also so much contradiction that it cancels the message the author is trying to convey. I genuinely connected with what Iman Hariri-Kia talked about in the author’s note that I assumed the rest of the book would follow that line of thought.