This was very wholesome... and that's kind of it! Milo and Marcos… was, at certain points, exactly my scene: a gay apocalyptic rom-com? SIGN 👏 ME 👏 UP. But this fell sooo short for me. The apocalyptic elements are sparse, the character development is shallow, and the writing choices made me want to bail. At no point did I believe these were high school seniors. Everyone is written like an eighth grader—who, for some reason, all watch The Golden Girls. As the MC, Milo is very earnest, to the point where it sometimes feels like immaturity. He clearly has depth as a character, but his dialogue comes across as someone a few years his junior, just strongly without nuance. (Makes you wonder if he's a senior just so Snipes could write about him going off-campus for lunch and eating curly fries—that's the only reasoning I've got.)

Early on, this book takes a very severe detour into religious guilt. The apocalyptic elements come and go, but they're never as much of a focal point as advertised. I wish the publisher didn't bury the lede on this one. This is queer Christian fiction, please, let's call this for what it is. Milo and Marcos both go to Jesus Camp™, both families are devout churchgoers, and both boys experience religious guilt in their families. The book holds a decent conversation around these issues, but again: the book jacket makes NO mention of this, despite it being what literally a third of the book is about. And here I thought this was going to be like All That's Left in the World. Hardly.

As I've been saying with a lot of books lately: I see the vision. There was almost a cosmic horror apocalypse vibe, but the moments never added up meaningfully. There was almost a good rom-com structure, except for I never believed that high school seniors watch Designing Women. And Marcos is propositioned as just this good guy that gives Milo so much space and doesn't really have a lot of faults beyond that??

Idk, this is a perfectly nice book, but it just had so many moments where I was like: I wouldn't have written that!!!! But all in all, pretty cute if you know what you're stepping into.