5/1/2022: Rereading this made it more spectacular than the first time. I didn't think this was possible, but yet, here we are. Six blasting stars.

I have no idea what happened to me. This entire month I had the most uncontrollable urge to go through every possible "Friends-to-lovers" movie, book, song... I am writing down this entire review as I listen to Dress by Taylor Swift and I honestly have no regrets.

I don't know if Taylor coming out with Red this past week brought back every feeling I have ever felt, repressed and let it course through my system during my teenage years. Our community likes to pretend friends-to-lovers is the worst trope, but we forget we spent at least 10+ years of our middle school/high school years wishing our guy best friend would fall in love with us. I never hid the fact that Dear John and Teardrops on My guitar made me cry more than once.

Here I am, 10 years later from being 15 and I can still remember what wanting something you can't have feels like. I can still remember what it felt like to lay your head down your pillow and wish you could be more than just friends . Don't let the cover fool you (yes, I still hate most of the overly colorful covers). This book made me believe in friends-to-lovers supremacy . This book made me SCREAM to the lyrics: "drop everything now, meet me in the pouring rain, kiss me by the sidewalk, take away the pain" like there was no tomorrow.

I hardly ever read books that make me say: gosh, I wish I had a love like this and this was one of them.

So down-to-earth, so real, no bullsh*t, effortlessly funny. No absurd, childish plots. I honestly wouldn't even consider this a romcom. Maybe it isn't. This was raw, built with realistic, mundane dialogues with an absurd amount of depth. I still can't believe that such a simplistic tale made me feel so f*cking much. This book DESERVES to win best romance of 2021.

I guess I do have a soft side after all, and my weakness ended up being the best "friends-to-lovers" book ever written. I blame Emily Henry, and Taylor Swift.