Thank you to NetGalley. St. Martin’s Press, and St. Martin’s Griffin for an ARC of this book. All opinions in this review are my own.
I was really looking forward to reading this book, and the end result was it was cute. Not the most amazing book I have read recently, but definitely better than some of the others. We have body positivity done in a healthy manner, with plus-size female lead(s) – one of whom is working in fashion – and we have a non-traditional male lead when it comes to attractiveness (nerdy, cardigans, scrawny, etc.). The premise is graduate school, specifically a PhD program, relating to literature, and it is a battle of medieval lit. We have fighting toxic masculinity and learning to forgive (or not forgive) toxic family members. Overall, it has a lot of concepts that would make this a really strong book that is making great statements – it just fell slightly flat for me. I don’t know if it was writing style or if it felt a little too rushed or what, but it felt like it just missed the mark slightly on some of the points. Not to say it wasn’t good, it just didn’t quite make it in my top list of books right now. However, if you liked The Love Hypothesis (or any of Ali Hazelwood’s books) you will probably enjoy this too. Solid 3.5/5