Cody

What a beautiful cover for such an empty book. What's basically said with the illustration and title is played off as a late reveal. It lacked any subtlety or tension, and didn't go any further
Additionally the tone and humor did not work for me in the slightest. I don't see what, if anything, of value this retelling added.

The added (sub)text of feminism and queerness was incredibly gauche, tried to be progressive and it wasnt. Army-imposed pronouns is such a strange way to go about doing “empowering” nonbinary representation.

This isn't Great under by any stretch of the imagination, but i had such a grand time it had to reflect into my rating. My expectations were low and this hit a lot of my most self indulgent tastes. By the end i was very invested and kicking my feet in the air.

Now the politics are atrocious; if the sentence “This is like Watergate on acid” (referring to a liberal making an homophobic remark) is something you cannot look past: dont read this. (I nearly dropped it there and then)
This is extremely cynical and liberal in its approach to politics, if you're a leftist or/and political nerd like me you will not have a great time on that front.

Things to note if you're on the fence:
- this is a bully-type romance
- the characters are NOT likable, especially at the beginning, and most of them will stay that way.
- millennial humor (tho this was an unusually low cringe read for me on that front).
If those are deal-breakers, give your time to better things for yourself.

As a strictly raised queer christian child this piqued my interest.
In the beginning it introduced cool ideas, what felt like a possibly compelling conflict: i got excited about where this would go.
At every turn it fumbled any interesting direction, and any build up of tension. It kept forgetting about elements it set up, a lot of the characterization was all over the place and disappointingly unrealistic.
Not even mentioning how unexplored, and inconsistent the entire religion part of this book was. Theo's family and upbriging + his anxiety disorder and self censoring of swears made me believe this would be interesting, but his entire life's conditioning barely gave him any struggle or made him hold any prejudice, it was all so surface level. This part of the book especially did not work for me in the slightest.

It's a shame the paranormal exploration didn't continue on after their initial meeting. They could've slowly learned to know each other while investigating ghosts together. Or the tiktok fame seeking: we could've confronted Theo's faith with his pride and need for attention. It would make for interesting character conflict, both his queerness and ego would've put a divide between him and the church "how will he deal with that?" Or, still tiktok fame-wise: he could've gotten popular from posting more paranormal content with Caleb after the original video (Why does he never go further with that? Why does he never make a single more video? This was baffling to me). Maybe people in the comments would ve picked up on their chemistry and Theo could've posted more with him, maybe even other than paranormal content (a nod to the tiktok dance scene, they could've just done and posted it.) There would definitely be incentive to post more with Caleb and to explore their friendship and relationship more if Theo's desire for fame and attention was a more consistent characterization (it just gets forgotten). Popularity and visibility on tiktok with Caleb might have made Theo fear being outed in a more interesting way. But above all the most disappointing road not taken was to not go further on Theo's original "haunting" theory when he noticed his attraction to Caleb. This could've been such a powerful metaphor, and great way for Theo to keep seeking and exploring those feelings under the cover of "its not really something he can help, because it's the doing of a ghost, even a possession". This could've illustrated his confusion and road to learn who he really is. It could've provided more tension. It went a little bit that way but it just gave up.