If I had to describe this book in 1 word it would be disappointing.


PLOT / ROMANCE:

The story made absolutely no sense (on sooo many levels). First of all, Ashvin and his friends came up with dares to prompose to the girls they like, and Ashvin ends up “having to” learn synchronized swimming to impress and prompose to his crush (which is ridiculous, bc this girl literally doesn’t care about synchronized swimming at all . That’s literally a completely unrelated activity… 😐 Why would she care about that???? Just prompose in a way that she’d actually appreciate, like…….?????)

Ashvin tries to learn synchronized swimming from June, who’s basically a pro. She immediately antagonizes him for absolutely no reason. I feel like the author just made them “““hate””” each other so she could say this is enemies-to-lovers, I’m not even joking. 🙄 All of their bickering and “hatred” for each other felt insanely forced. Also, for some reason, even though she “hates” him, June still accepts to teach him synchro…….?? Literally why ??

Then June has some kind of competition and fails miserably so Ashvin jumps in the pool, clumsily dances and splashes around in the water with her (bc at this point he still knows nothing about synchronized swimming), and that somehow helps June and kind of saves her performance…?? First of all, why would the public be charmed by that? Secondly, why would he jump in the pool and make a fool out of himself for someone who’s basically a stranger?? 🫤 And then they go viral for this little ~performance~… Okay. 🫥

Because of the attention this got, June is incentivized to duet with Ashvin, so she has an actual reason to teach him synchro now (even though she had already accepted it despite “hating” him and having literally no reason to do it before. Idk why the author didn’t just make her accept to be his teacher *now* that she actually had something to gain from it, but I digress. Just another thing that makes little to no sense in this book).

Even though Ashvin continues to be relatively nice towards June, she keeps being a bitch for absolutely no reason. She immediately calls him lazy and undetermined despite literally not knowing him. Once again, I feel like the author was just trying to force an enemies-to-lovers thing into this damn book.

Ashvin keeps learning synchronized swimming (which idk if it’s something you can learn in just like 1 or 2 months, but at this point I honestly don’t care). He keeps reminding us that he’s doing all this just to prompose to his crush which, as I already mentioned, makes no fucking sense!!!!!! Why are we still pretending he needs to learn synchro just to prompose??? He can literally just ask the girl out! This is literally all just a stupid dare his friends came up with. The girl he wants to go to prom with doesn’t even care about synchronized swimming at all!!!!!!!!!! Stop this foolishness!!! 😭🤚🏻

It literally gets to the point where his crush asks him out and he declines bc he has swimming practice…….. Like????? 🤨 The whole point of doing this thing is to impress this girl, yet when she actually shows interest in him, he refuses to go out with her???? Isn’t that what you want??? 🤨🤨🤨 And you’re STILL trying to convince me this plan to “get the girl” makes sense??? Bye. 🙄

At around the 40% mark June and Ashvin start fake dating, and I laughed bc I literally had forgotten this book was supposed to be about fake dating lmaoooooooooo 🥴💀🥴💀🥴💀. Idk why it took so long for the idea to even come up. Also, it was mostly irrelevant and unnecessary to the story, so…

Anyways. June and Ashvin end up falling for each other (shocker, I know). I never felt any of their chemistry and their banter wasn’t even amusing(I think June asking Ashvin if he liked his crush’s boogers was supposed to be funny, but I just stared into the imaginary camera like in the Office and sighed). They supposedly “hated” each other yet started catching feeling after a couple of classes. Okay. 😑 I don’t even know why they even saw each other as *FRIENDS*, so when they started saying they were *IN LOVE* it genuinely felt like a slap in the face. Like, goddamn. Where did this come from?? Lmao. 🥴

Overall: boo. The only thing I enjoyed was the open ending.



WRITING:

The writing wasn’t terrible, but it also wasn’t good, and there were a number of things that kept taking me out of the story:

➤ the numerous formatting mistakes

➤ the telling instead of showing

➤ the incessant pop culture references

➤ the fact that he kept calling her a siren/mermaid/sea creature/etc ALL THE TIME!!!!!! Literally every conversation they had!!! IT DROVE ME FUCKING INSANE I SWEAR TO GODDDDDDDDDD

➤ sometimes there were lines that completely pulled me out of the story bc they genuinely sounded like they were written by a child 🥴💀 examples: “Lei Cheng grinned like the awkward smile emoji” ,,,,,,,,, “the conversation continued like a car skidding across pavement. Skrrr, crash, and burn.”,,,,,,,,, “Motorbikes zoomed by with their tiny honks, beep-beep-beeping” ,,,,,,,,, “he let out the whistle he’d been holding in” ………………????????

➤ there were also some conversations that made no sense to me???? Like, at some point Ashvin asks June “How are you so strong?” and she responds with “Oh, sweetie, I’m not the mermaid. (…) I’m the sea witch.” ❓❓❓ Am I the only one who thinks this answer makes no sense as a response to the question that was asked??? Maybe my brain is just fried at this point. Affff idc anymore.

➤ just overall the fact they kept reiterating the plan even though it made literally no sense.



CHARACTERS:

Ashvani had the typical “Becoming a doctor is YOUR dream, dad, not mine! 😤” story line, which I just didn’t care about.

June had a hobby that I don’t see much of, and it’s clear the author knew a lot about it, which was interesting. But, overall, I just didn’t care about her at all. Her insistence on being antagonistic and making rude assumptions about a complete stranger who did nothing to her definitely put me off. I also didn’t care about her whole “I’m not worth it. I don’t deserve you. You shouldn’t be here.” thing. Sorry. 😬

I’ll forget about the side characters in a day. June’s little brother was okay, I guess. Ashvin’s friends had no distinct personalities; I just saw them as 1 combined entity. June’s friend is so irrelevant I literally forgot she existed *in the middle of the book, as I was reading* 💀. Ashvin says Tara (the girl he liked and wanted to prompose to) had become his friend, but I didn’t really see any of that friendship. I also couldn’t tell you anything about her. So….. 🤷