Representations: https://trello.com/c/OoEEjYm5/145-she-gets-the-girl-by-rachael-lippincott-alyson-derrick

This was so damn sweet, it was genuinely lovely to finally read a romance between 2 people who didn't seem to hate each other lmao. So many green flags everywhere!!!

Absolutely loved the characters and how they had their own complicated backgrounds. Molly and Alex were really good and strong main characters with very different PoVs. The side characters largely were basically just there to push Molly and Alex forward and not that much else. What we learn about them basically just directly ties back to something with Molly and Alex. But that was alright tbh. It was just enough that the side characters felt a little more than just 2d (mostly), but the focus was very clearly not on them.

The romance was so adorable. Absolutely big up on the authors for highlighting bad behaviour as bad and something to avoid. Emotional abuse is something way too easily brushed aside and explained away, and too many books push those kinda relationships as good. I get loving toxic romances, but we need more books like this one that show good relationships and getting out of bad ones. I did hesitate at the very start of the book, as Alex was experiencing the emotional abuse from her "partner", but very glad that the writing didn't try and make that behaviour ok.

The use of classical novels and the one class that went into one of the books a little in a specific way was a really nice way to tie in the themes. I'd have loved to have seen a bit more around all that though aside from the single scene we got, especially with how many books were mentioned by name, how often they spent in the library, etc.

It's very much a predictable book, and the blurb says how it goes anyway so there's nothing really to spoil. It's just a very good novel on the characters and how they work with first going to college, becoming independent and becoming more themselves. Honestly makes me wish I could have gone to uni just to have a similar experience as reading this book, I could just feel the characters becoming free and being more confident with themselves.