Shooo I haven’t read a lit book in ages, but this one was superb. I love love loved Eileen, but found Alice a bit intolerable. It made me think a lot, and I really enjoy that

i did not get the hype with Normal People so i was hesitant to read another Sally Rooney book after that. but this book, dear lord this book had me on an emotional rollercoaster. i was hooked from the start and only put it down because i had to go to work. im satisfied with how it ended but like, i still want moreeeeee

if you didn’t like Normal People but want to give Sally Rooney another chance, i highly recommend this one

slower start for me than her other 2 novels but I literally think about this book all the time

Sally Rooney's characters are nothing if not realistic. I felt I was reading about the people in my own life, about the actual stories of ordinary folk. These aren't love stories that swell the heart with big gestures and serendipitous circumstances that have one believing in the miracles of romance. But they are real. The end game is flawed, the relationships are messy, not in the dramatic sense, but ordinarily so. Sally Rooney writes, with good understanding, about the socio-economic factors that play into our interpersonal lives. How class differences can forge oceans between us, how power dynamics in age gaps can be so easy to fall into and so hard to crawl out of. I found it smart, the way she wrote in third person, as an observer, because it really instated the reality of such things. That most of the time they aren't overcome. That, at the end of the day, these are just the normal people we see at the supermarket or catching a train. I appreciated that the most when I finished the book. I felt like I was being told that it's going to be okay, that even though I can't overcome everything, there is still beauty to be found amongst it all.  

second time reading it. it’s excellent, yet my least favourite of Rooney’s novels.