3.5. Casey McQuiston's writing continues to shine, both technically and emotionally, and I feel awful for not loving this more since I know a lot of it comes down to personal preference. The rest of it comes down to not meeting expectations that I have based on the author's three previous and totally unrelated books.

The plot of this revolves around one of my least favorite things: people getting in their own way because they refuse to communicate the things that matter. You can't expect people to interpret silence or expressions or anything other than you saying the exact words you want them to hear - it's a mean thing to do to a person that you supposedly care for. You can't hold someone responsible for something you never tell them they're responsible for, and that's this entire book. And the 'we love each other but we're going to stubbornly do anything but what both of us would like to do' went on entirely too long for me. Especially once they admitted they were still in love with each other and yet were not going to try again and instead just ruin every possible future relationship they could ever have with anyone else by staying in each other's lives and together in all ways but geographically. That's adult? That's you showing your maturity? Like, even as they were saying it, it wasn't convincing and they sounded like idiots. I need those things to at least have the barest whiff of believability and it didn't. It felt like a plot construction more than anything else. I could go along with all the rationalizations up to that point and then it was like: dude, really? How long do you want to drag this book out exactly? When Kit tells Maxine and she was like: I don't agree and you sound dumb and Kit was like: this made so much sense before but, yeah, you're right. Like, no, my man, it didn't make sense before either though and you sounded dumb in the moment.

That was the first bit. I'm sure some people love that will-they, won't-they business but I am much more: you know you will, I know you will, so cut to the goddamned chase.

The other failure for me was that in every book previous to this, a community is built around our MCs. Their friends and relations feel like relationships that are just as valuable as the romantic one being formed. And since Kit and Theo are my least favorite MCs Casey McQuiston has made so far, they needed that community. And while it's clear the tour bus becomes acquaintances, they never really progress to friends, not even like... vacation buddies. Just vacation.... familiar faces. We never know much about them and there are too many for any of them to stand out or feel solid, plus many of them are held at arm's length as just potential tally marks on Kit and Theo's scorecards, which preclude them from ever really being more than that. I really missed that sense of kindness and camaraderie from strangers turned family this time around. In every other book, platonic love feels just as important as romantic love and this was like: no, but THESE TWO. And they're not even the best romance the author has to their name so really?

This still gets rated so high because I think this is the best writing I've seen so far from this author. There are some truly beautiful lines, glorious turns of phrase, the descriptions of the food are decadent, the wine is rich, the longing tugs your heart along with the words. It's gorgeous writing, and this book definitely needed it the most because it had to pull up the rest for me.