3.5 Stars

The writing is beautiful and spectacular. That’s just a fact that has to be acknowledged from the get go. The emotional, bittersweet ending for LGBT+ character isn’t anything new. We see it in Call Me By Your Name; however, I thought that CMBYN portrayed it better and made me feel for Elio as where I was having a hard time connecting with Ellis until “Michael” started telling his part of the story. Ellis was very depressing as a narrator and sometimes parts of his sections felt like they dragged on.
I became captivated entirely by the story when Michael took over.
He was straight-forward, witty, and recounted something interesting. He would have made a better narrator, in my opinion.
I’m not sure how I felt about the time arrangements in this book. I think it was a poor choice to start at the end because there was no surprise or twist to the story. Note, however, there’s still a bittersweet feeling towards the end.
One of my last issues with this book was that there were more gay ppl in it than, I thought, coincidence could allow (if we are trying to make the story as believable as possible) for the time period it’s set in.
I was disappointed because so many ppl hyped this book and it wasn’t what I thought it would be. I wanted an LGBT+ tear-jerker like ppl said this was and I didn’t get one.