Kenyeh <3

Comparing this to ‘the secret history’ makes a lot of sense because the themes are similar and the plot shares some key moments, and despite loving both I experienced very different emotions reading them.

This was without the distant unease I felt whilst reading TSH, the characters in IWWV feel so immensely human and were all tragically relatable at different times through the book. The relationships felt so high stakes in the way that young adult relationships tend to and despite disagreeing with almost everything Oliver does throughout, I found myself genuinely rooting for him. It didn’t use isolation of the main character to garner any sympathy for Oliver , in fact you just feel empathy for all of the group the entire way through.

The way that Shakespeare acts as the unreliable narrator for the entire novel but also individually for every character individually is actually genius and has made my fall down a king Lear hole.

At the end of the day it’s a book about twenty somethings being; homoerotic, intensely envious and irrational. Which is what being twenty something is like.

I was all in for the first half of this book, as predictable as it was I was still excited for them to discover what I knew from page one. I felt like the book did a good job of acknowledging how ridiculous the ‘coincidences’ that occur are and actually turned it into an interesting discussion about luck.

However I thought the second half was really incongruous with Olive’s character and the attempt at plot not centred on the couple fell very flat.

Where do I send a letter to all light romance authors that they can stop writing the exact same epilogue because we all know what’s going on? <3

I love Gifford Dudley! I genuinely thought that the plot made more sense in the show than in the book but I did like having Edward as a pivotal perspective throughout and I am grateful for Bess character development!

I feel like the political aspect of it all is so close to being meaningful but instead I just spent the whole book thinking about what animal I would like to be!

I thought the narration got a tad lazy near the end, and was being used so frequently for humour it was distracting from genuinely funny characters but Jane and Gifford are a truly believable couple and I did enjoy their development <3