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about ten years ago when i was starting to get back into reading for fun and not school, i went through this tear of a ton of pulpy sapphic romance novels. many relied on alternating-chapter dual POV nonsense to create “tension,” where each character would be super into the other, but they were so fucking bad at communicating and didn't know or couldn't tell the other person liked them, so the dual POV in this book was refreshing because wil and katie manage to actually talk to each other honestly about their feelings and desires. (maybe too honestly in some parts? i think they like, openly talk about masturbating while in a room full of older adults at a house party? after not talking for thirteen years? no one approaches them all evening, even this world-famous EGOT or almost-EGOT celeb/hometown hero, not even to just say hi?) and i like the setup: childhood friends to lovers, something secret and/or forbidden by circumstance, two people reconnecting after a 10+ year gap. i actually kept thinking of the sex scene(s)—was there more than one? i don't remember—from the otherwise shitty wlw movie called all about E; at the time i watched it, i was very into the dynamic of reunited exes having previously already established familiarity with their bodies but also bringing new things to the table (bed). like a homecoming, ayo. the rest of the movie is pretty trash though. but the book was kinda like that even though they were “just” besties in high school, so i liked that.
for me, everyone i kissed started out real strong because i was like, hey i enjoy these tropes, and the audiobook narration was fun. but once i switched from listening to the story over two 3-4 hour drives and started reading it with my eyeballs, i felt like the dialogue especially became a slog to get through. we'd be in the middle of something interesting and/or sexy, and they'd just stop to alternatingly deliver long ass monologues. it felt unnatural and broke up the flow. there's also a small bit about privilege that felt very shoehorned in, especially since we kept being reminded all book about how blonde/golden these white women are.
the morals of the story that became apparent in the denouement weren't bad at all, but ultimately i felt like it was a clunky way to get there. and we probably didn't need so much stuff in the middle to build up to it, since that mostly dragged.
3.5/5 probably? it entertained me for my long drives, but then it became a chore to finish. even with the steamy stuff.
ugh i just love this series so much. i put this volume on hold at the library as soon as it was released and just got it this week. we've been pretty focused just on nomoto-san and kasuga-san up until this point, but this volume introduced two new characters in a deft, nuanced way rather than adding clutter (which can sometimes happen in these kinds of stories), each with their own relationships (good or bad) with food. and feelings are happening!!! not even subtextually!!!!
japanese volume 4 is already out as of this past june, but since english volume 3 came out in october, there's a long wait ahead for the next installment
(notes on 6/27/2023) this was a reread (dates are estimated, but definitely during june 2023), only brought on by me watching 2/3 of the disney+ television adaptation (mediocre, imo, despite the cast) and wanting to revisit the source material to see if the MC was as insufferable in the graphic novel as he is in the show. i last read this a very long time ago, likely close to release date, and i've kept it on my shelf for this long because it was a showoff title for my asian american lit collection. i can't say i love it now or find as much importance in it the further away from high school i get, but it was certainly a book of its time.
i think it embellishes the story of the monkey king and i'm kinda intrigued about how the OG story actually went, because i only remember bits and pieces from my upbringing. i was trying to summarize the OG for a friend before we started the show but couldn't remember details beyond him storing a size-changing magic staff in his ear, wrecking a peach garden, and trying to outrun someone's hand and peeing on it thinking it was a mountain then getting trapped under a rock.
this glorified wellesley fanfic was mildly entertaining (as someone who also went to a massachusetts historically women's college, but a generation ago, while we were still having the same conversations about gender and sexuality but a little before they were called “historically” women's colleges) but not anything mind-blowing. i was honestly ready to give up about a third of the way through because sophie and jo's juvenile (literally; felt like i was witnessing junior high schoolers, not college first-years) online feud was so exhausting to read, and it felt like it went on forever. i also listened a little bit to the audiobook and i think that didn't help my impression of sophie being mad annoying/holier-than-thou. eventually her friends tell her to get over herself and she somewhat improves, though, so thank you side characters, even if your personalities all kind of melded into one amorphous sounding board.
as for the aroace stuff: it was sometimes hard to tell what was like, a character's fear of abandonment or personal insecurity or past hangup versus part of a particular identity-related struggle, if that makes sense. not that they have to be particularly distinct from one another, but i also don't know if i was left with a particularly strong impression of aromanticism, or even why/how our protagonists liked each other intensely enough for things to fall somewhere beyond friendship. they were completely unnecessarily petty and obsessively mean online, but upon the inevitable reveal, the focus just narrowed down to “you didn't tell me your secret identity and that's why i'm mad”? huh??
ps. it doesn't exactly spoil anything, but ann zhao really went ahead and casually described the final scene in alice wu's last movie just like that, lol.
pps. i've been removed from it for quite a while now but reading this book just reminded me (not in a good way) how insular small liberal arts college subculture (and hyperlocalized queer communities) can be. i worked in a higher ed setting for a while after uni. it's just the same old stuff!