➤ Brooke’s anxiety was the most interesting part of this book for me. At some points it was VERY relatable to me (especially when it came to social anxiety). At other points, though, Brooke’s anxiety was like 100 times worse than anything I’ve ever experienced. It seemed pretty debilitating, and I wish we’d seen her get some help or something, idk.

➤ I didn’t care about the romance at all. I feel like Brooke and Jesse’s bond wasn’t well established. Their initial friendship from back when they were 14 wasn’t very well built up, and their new friendship in the present was also not that believable. I didn’t really see why they liked each other as friends, let alone as more than that. I legit rolled my eyes when they said they loved each other at the end lol. 😐 It also kind of annoyed me that they kept putting off the conversation about the argument that ended their friendship in the past. And then then they finally talked, Jesse apologized, and they established that they liked each other. And yet….. Brooke insisted that they should just stay friends????? Why? The author was just dragging things out istg…….. 🙄 Jesse could’ve apologized very early on and they could’ve gotten together before the 50% mark, I’m being deadass. So, overall, the romance wasn’t even believable or well built up to begin with + it unnecessarily dragged.

➤ The characters were mostly irrelevant. Jesse was an okay LI, I guess (though when they FINALLY got together we found out he’s one of those dudes who has no desk, no shelves, no bedframe… he just sleeps on a mattress on the floor… ickkkk 😬). Their roommate Harper was just there. She seemed fun but I also didn’t feel like her friendship with Brooke and Jesse was properly built up. I think the author wanted the readers to feel like they became besties in the time they lived together, like a real ~found family~ or whatever, but I legit felt nothing when they started saying stuff like “You belong with us. With me and Harper and our house.” and “You’re one of my closest friends now”. Like…… okay. I guess. If you say so… 😐😐😐 Brooke’s university friends were mentioned 3 times in the whole book. I don’t think I could’ve come up with characters that are more irrelevant than those friends, to be quite frank. 🥴

➤ Several instances of telling instead of showing. For example: Brooke starts university, has classes for an entire month and makes friends that she becomes close enough with that she (someone with SEVERE anxiety) is comfortable enough with to invite them to her house for a party, AND YET we see *nothing* of it! It’s just told to us! And there were soooo many instances where stuff like this happened…… 😕

➤ Multiple formatting mistakes / typos. Also, the author did something that kind of annoyed me: when people spoke in flashbacks or in Brooke’s thoughts the author didn’t use quotation marks or even italics. Everything was just “regular” text and run on sentences where only half of it was the actual speech and the other half wasn’t. It wasn’t necessarily difficult to understand what was and wasn’t speech, but still; it was a little annoying.

➤ Overall okay, I guess. I’ll forget about this in a week, which is probably for the best because I didn’t care about this book at all.