The Map from Here to There

I'm chalking this up to the wrong book at the wrong time. I loved The Start of Me and You, and I usually relate really well to Lord's protags - they're smart teen girls who struggle and try and fail and pick themselves back up again, and often her books deal with anxiety and grief, and OMG WHY didn't this book resonate with me?!

I think it's simply because ... there's enough anxiety and struggle happening in the real world right now, and watching Paige freak out about choosing a college and maintaining her relationship with Max without basing all her choices around him ... those are such valid worries and I absolutely worried about those things when I was a teen (and still worry and cry and panic about every single life change!) ... but I felt like ugh, there's a pandemic happening, this fictional character's choice of college is irrelevant because she'd be sheltering at home and doing online classes, and not seeing her friends except over video chat anyway, and as such her anxiety about everything was suffocating.