This book follows Alis’ struggles with his mental health. It was a hard read, at times, but it seemed like a very realistic and honest portrayal of depression. There was a very good exploration of Alis’ feelings when it came to his self-harm, his abusive family, the bullying he suffered and his ex-bestie Jordan; I also really liked seeing Alis grow and heal, slowly, through his new friendships.

This is definitely not a bad book, at all, and I’d still recommend it! For some reason, however, it just never managed to fully grab my attention. 😕 I genuinely can’t pinpoint what happened here, but I was disengaged and extremely bored the whole way through, and I never wanted to pick this book up. It took me 10 days to finish such a simple book. I can’t even explain why I was so uninterested in this story, but alas.

I also didn’t really care about the romance. The book takes place in a week and Alis and Craig never really spoke to each other before, so they go from basically strangers to friends to lovers in just a couple of days, which wasn’t very believable to me. They show interest in each other really early on in the book. I feel like they weren’t even friends and they were already into each other, just based on looks (which like, is how attraction usually works, sure, but *I* personally find it boring to read about. I prefer it when characters fall for the other’s personality first. Just a personal thing, which unfortunately made me not care about their romance).

With that said, Craig was really sweet and understanding of Alis’ problems, which I really appreciated. I also LOOOOOVE to see a fat LI! We rarely see different types of bodies in romances, especially with the male characters, so I really liked this representation.

So, overall, this is a very well-done book that tackles important topics in a sensitive yet raw way, and I’d definitely recommend it (though check out the TWs!). Unfortunately, though, it just didn’t work for me. 😢