it takes skill to make

cannibalism

underwhelming.

seriously, though. i enjoyed the initial depiction of the farmers’ market, so that’s what earns this book its 1 star, but literally everything else fell flat. the mc did not read like a professor. i’ve been in academia long enough to know that maybe being in grad school (vs. in the workforce) for a big chunk of your life does result in some emotional immaturity but oh my god was the mc straight-up dumb… this is a poem she unironically writes to the love interest (and we’re supposed to believe she teaches literature):

The steam was high
The water was low
I made an archipelago
Thinking of you
Alone in the night
Volcanoes erupting by candlelight.