Find Me

Hated it!!!

I tried to give this a chance, I really did.

The first half was full of masturbatory straight bullshit. So much misogyny and a manic pixie dream girl—I seriously kept forgetting this was just published, in The Year of Our Lesbian Jesus 20-bi-teen, and not in the early 2000s. I honestly wish someone had told me to skip to the section called “Cadenza” in the middle of the book, so here I am, telling you to do that. All you'll miss out on is a headache.

I only kept reading in the hopes that Elio's and Oliver's POVs would be better, and they were, but not by much. I knew I would feel this way, but the ~new ending~ completely reversed so much of the point of the first book. I'm all for Happily Ever Afters for queer people, like, 95% of the time, but Elio and Oliver were never meant to be together. Their passion and desire was never going to last past a summer. Maybe that's not how everyone interpreted Call Me By Your Name, but for me, their intense and fleeting love affair was the whole point.

Overall, Aciman's writing remained sharp and poignant, with a few moments of brilliance. The story of Michel's father and the friend/lover who gifted him some mysterious sheet music was haunting and captivating. But instead of writing a whole book with new characters focused on that, Aciman decided to write this book that I would like to rename Find Me (a Sleeping Pill Because I'm Tired of Unnecessary Sequels).