I had read the novel adaptation of Dear Evan Hansen in 2020 and not particularly cared for it. This book, written by the same author, was amazing (for YA). Maybe it is the fact that it is not his debut or maybe it is the fact that it’s his own story that he’s creating and not based on an already popular story in existence but I think he did much better. Some things I loved- the ending with Mac’s reaction to her confession and their eventual reconciliation (because while it is a YA book, it also a romance book, and so of course there’s a HEA) and it wasn’t as cute as some romance endings but I liked it. (honestly the ending lowkey made me think of some hit and miss Supergirl fanfic out there where Kara tells certain people that she’s Supergirl- you can’t just drop a bombshell and expect things to continue like normal real easily). I also liked how the topic of grief was handled. It was interesting how he chose to write where it wasn’t all in chronological order. There’d be some chapters where they were together the night they met in the museum and then there’d be some chapters taking place earlier in the day or a flashback to weeks earlier. While reading it, I wasn’t the biggest fan of that writing choice but now I realize that it makes sense because if I’d known some of the things that she had said and done before they met at the beginning of the book, I would’ve likely been less likely to be excited about them getting together. Finding out closer to when he did makes sense that way. (I tried to be very unspoilery in this review but just tell me if I need to go back and click the spoiler warning button)

Really interesting. Slightly repetitive sometimes but I mostly loved this book. Got me thinking about choosing to do something about suffrage for my capstone paper next semester instead of waiting for grad school to do something on that topic.

This is the stereotypical way of representing autism (but written before TBBT started airing) and the chapter numbers being just prime numbers threw me off a bit especially at the beginning but the overall plot was really good. There were some very unexpected plot twists. I liked it and am glad that my grandma recommended it to me.