This was such a fun read! I hadn't read a full-length Ali Hazelwood book since The Love Hypothesis, and I really enjoyed this one. There is something to be said about using so much pop culture in a book, but I actually think the Gen Z tone isn't hauntingly painful. It's just a bit cringe sometimes (minus the BTS references, I would never mean this about you, BTS references). I love a head-over-heels boy in love with a painfully-oblivious girl. I will eat it up every time, this time included! I honestly wish this could have been an adult novel (no shade to YA). But I think everything else worked in the YA format, and I appreciated how it was more of a mature young adult novel. If the characters had been aged up just a bit, I think it would've worked perfectly as an adult novel, too, which I think just shows that the integrity of the novel is there. I only found the ending a little lackluster

how are you going to spend the whole book with Nolan wanting to play Mallory in chess and then end the book right as it's happening?! i wanted to know what they were feeling when it happened!

Overall, it was a fun and sweet read (and the cover is so beautiful it's impossible not to pick up).