I was soooo excited to read this book, since it seemed super cute and has a lot of diversity! Unfortunately, though, this was the most poorly written book I have ever read in my entire life. I’ve read a lot of self-published books, and I understand that indie authors don’t have access to editors like traditionally published authors do, so I was prepared for some very average writing. But MY GOD. I have NEVER encountered a book as terribly written as this one, and the awful prose distracted me from page 1. I couldn’t go more than 3 paragraphs without being completely pulled out of the story because of the poor writing. I genuinely thought I’d love this (and there were things I actually enjoyed, hence the 2 stars), but unfortunately this was so bad that I couldn’t make it past the 35% mark.

Right from the start, the author mixes present and past tense. And it’s not just a couple of instances that maybe slipped by. No! It happens in every! single! paragraph! I genuinely don’t understand how you can write an entire book and not even THINK about what tense you’re writing in…… 😬 In addition to this, the author also used 1st person, when the book is supposed to be in 3rd person, and there were also several typos. This, however, didn’t happen as often, which, when compared to the constant change between present and past tenses every other sentence, seems hilariously mild. 🥴

The author also broke the 4th wall a lot, which was purposeful (she wrote a note about it at the start of the book), but also unnecessary (it literally did nothing positive for the story). The way it was done felt extremely amateurish: the author would just abruptly stop scenes to awkwardly insert something like “Jess to the audience: *sheepishly* my dating history isn’t the best”, which was not only cringy and irrelevant, but I also feel like it’d work better if it was actually part of the narration or the characters’ inner thoughts.

Additionally, instead of properly weaving in the characters’ backstories, the author just used more 4th wall breaks like “Layla to the audience: now, just a flashback from 14-year-old me” to drop random flashbacks here and there (sometimes randomly stopping present-day scenes), which is not only very amateurish, but it also made the story feel extremely disjointed. Sometimes, this barely read like a story; it felt more like a collection of scenes, at some points of the book.

Another thing I didn’t like about the writing was the fact that the MCs both have their own respective chapters (this book has dual POV), but the author literally jumped from one character’s thoughts to the other, which was just ridiculous… The text in Layla’s POV will literally focus on Jess and his thoughts, and vice-versa. Why make dual POVs when you’re just gonna ignore whose perspective we’re supposed to be in? 🫤😒

There were also a lot of things that felt very unclear in this book. For example, I thought Jess was mute, but at some point he and Layla are in the middle of a conversation and it says she “listened” to him, which like……? Is he NOT mute? Is he suddenly speaking? Was that a mistake on the author’s part or was he actually able to speak and only used sign language regularly for fun? I was so confused… 😭🤚🏻.

Another thing that felt unclear was the passage of time. In addition to the random flashbacks here and there, and the overall fact that this book often felt like a collection of scenes strung together (instead of a full narrative), there were some things that were randomly dropped without explanation and made the timeline EVEN MORE confusing. For example, the fact that, out of nowhere, Layla just starts using sign language (which she never mentioned she was learning, plus it’s something that takes a long time to perfect), but, in the same breath, she mentions that she and Jess are basically strangers (which means that NOT a lot of time has passed)………… Which is it, then??? What’s going on? Can the author make things clearer? I’m begging for a CRUMB of logic and explanations! Please! 😭

Because the passage of time was so unclear, it felt like not a lot of time had passed, but then the author drops that it’d been A MONTH and I was like 🫥🫥🫥… Also: we barely saw the characters interacting, and they CONSTANTLY emphasized that they were basically strangers, so that only made me more convinced that it hadn’t been that long. HOWEVER, SOMEHOW Jess and Layla had caught feelings for each other, and I genuinely don’t know why. We didn’t get many moments of their friendship developing, or their bond growing. Idk why they were so interested in each other (especially Jess. Why was he so intrigued by Layla? Why was he so obsessed with trying to get closer to her? It wasn’t forceful, or anything, don’t worry!!! It’s just that there wasn’t really any explanation for his feelings…). This wasn’t really insta-love, but, in a way, it kind of felt like it, because they were always acknowledging and saying out loud things like “We barely know each other.” and “You’re a stranger.”, and yet somehow had feelings for each other… 😕 Their flirtation sometimes was cute, though, so I’ll give them that.



Something that drove me a bit insane were the circumstances around Layla’s life. Mind you, this girl ran away from her abusive home completely alone to a new city on the other side of the country, where she didn’t know anybody. She didn’t have a college degree or anything. All she had were some art materials, so she started posting her art online. Somehow, in just a couple of months, she became super famous, which is highly unlikely, as a social media artist, but okay. I let that one slide. HOWEVER, the author just kept adding more and more insanely unlikely things to Layla’s life, and it literally became ridiculous. At some point I genuinely wondered if this was a parody! 😭😭😭 You know those wattpad fanfics where Y/N gets away from her boring life and is thrust into a new life, where she suddenly becomes close with a bunch of celebrities (her new BFFs are Taylor Swift, Miranda Kerr and Niall Horan, and Harry Styles is super in love with her, and she becomes mega famous and paparazzi are always following her around)? THAT’s what this book felt like! (I wish I was joking)…

In just 1 year of moving to a new city full of strangers, Layla:
➤ Started posting her art online and became very successful, even working for famous athletes and all.
➤ She became besties with a bunch of celebrities: a famous child star (who she also had a fling with), the most sought out and highest paid supermodel in the WORLD (those are the literal words used in the book), famous basketball players (so popular that they literally get followed by paparazzi), and a mega famous talk show host (watched all over the world, and so famous that “A-list celebrities reached out to her all the time for a chance to be on her show”). I can’t even imagine how some random girl got the possibility to get close to celebrities THAT famous, let alone become friends with them. 🥴
➤ A popular director and an animation supervisor announced that they had plans to work with her (mind you, she’d only come into the spotlight as an artist a couple of months prior, at most…).
➤ She made a short animated film by herself, and her friend SOMEHOW got a *FAMOUS KPOP IDOL* to write 2 songs *JUST FOR THE FILM*!?!?! And then the film got almost A BILLION views ❓❓❓
➤ Got 1 million followers on Instagram, which I thought was a HUGE amount for some random artist, but given the fact that she’s literally besties with some of the most popular people in the world, and her film got almost 1 BILLION views, 1 million followers doesn’t sound high enough.
➤ In the middle of all of this, she also had time to sell her paintings (it’s mentioned that Jess’s parents had bought a bunch of her work to display all over their house)… HOW did she have time to keep up with her social media art, her physical art that she sells, her art and graphic design commissions, animate an entire short film, + meet a bunch of celebrities (despite not being famous herself) IN LESS THAN 1 YEAR????????????

You see what I mean when I say this felt like a joke???? I managed to tolerate the first 2, 3 even 4 highly unrealistic things in her life. But the author just kept adding more and more things, to the point where I felt like I was going a little crazy. This felt like a joke; like a satire of those absurd wattpad fanfics written by a 12-year-old who genuinely believes she’ll suddenly become besties with every celebrity ever. But this author was being 100% sincere…… Yikes 🤡.



So, overall, while this book had nice things (really nice rep, and somewhat sweet romance, despite it being rushed), the writing was terrible to the point of annoyance. This book felt like a 1st draft written by a tween who was watching YouTube on the side instead of paying attention to what she was writing, and then didn’t bother to correct anything. The story was there, but the writing and story structure were insanely poor. This needed to go through SEVERAL rounds of editing. I think I would’ve enjoyed this if it had been written by a competent writer. I’m BEGGING this author to practice her craft and actually pay attention to what she’s writing, and PLEASE hire a beta reader. If she can’t, then please revise before publishing… 😭 If you think you can ignore terrible writing, go ahead and read this book. It seems kinda sweet, and the rep is great and very important, too.