sarah🪼

ya fantasy isn't the genre i usually go to but i wanted to give this book a try because of all the praise i was reading and hearing. but what a disappointment. i knew i was stepping out of my comfort zone and i really tried to get into the atmosphere of the book but i couldn't. i have been reading to book for a month and getting through it was honestly pretty hard. objectively, it's engaging and it can be addictive but personally, i just couldn't get into it. i hated most the characters even the ones we are supposed to appreciate. i found the main character pretty boring and even annoying at times, and while a flawed character isn't inherently a bad-written one (obviously), i just couldn't like her despite her flaws. i wasn't rooting for jude and her motivations were pretty unclear to me. overall, my reading experience was boring. i get why people like it and i thought i would love the ennemies to lovers trope in this but it was not convincing enough for me. i wasn't expecting to love this but i wasn't expecting to hate this neither... i feel bad saying all of this because i've read worst novels and if i'm being objective it's not terrible. however, i'm not giving up on ya fantasy because i used to love this genre earlier in my teenage years.

this book is going to haunt me for the rest of my life. most of it was boring and nothing really happened but i couldn't stop reading it. the characters are unlikable but somehow donna tartt made me sad for them in the end even if i wanted to hate them so bad. i seriously think that donna tartt put crack in this book, because i can't believe i managed to read 629 pages of almost nothing in less than a month.

“what they have now they can never have back again. but for her the pain of loneliness will be nothing to the pain that she used to feel, of being unworthy. he brought her goodness like a gift and now it belongs to her. meanwhile his life opens out before him in all directions at once. they've done a lot of good for each other. really, she thinks, really. people can really change one another.”

honestly i don't think i'll ever recover from this, i'm devastated. this book was so emotionally intense. it's almost indescribable how i felt reading this book. i was so invested in marianne and connell's relationship that sometimes i had to remind myself that they were fictional characters.

marianne and connell are so well-written that it's easy to relate to them both and impossible to prefer one over another. sally rooney's writing is very simple yet she's a genius at writing complex characters, which is the best quality a writer can have. she made marianne and connell feel real. i first wanted to rate this book 4 stars but then i decided that it fully deserves 5 stars for the reasons i mentioned and also because it's probably one of the best books i've ever read.