this is the most unhinged book i have read all year and i have so much to say about it, but i cant possibly organize it because it is, truly, all over the place. so, itemized list of observations it is. also, tw for mentions of sexual abuse, and also, i may spoil the book a little, in the spirit of truly discussing it in depth.

- when you read the synopsis, what do you expect? i, for one, expected summer food truck gays. which is a vibe i could really get into! you know me and forced proximity. but you know what it ended up being? sexual assault trauma, addiction and mother wound, and a food truck on the side. when i tell you i got whiplash!

- in the end, turns out its a book about healing. which is nice, i guess, once you get to the end. but the getting there is the hard part.

- when i say unhinged, i mean every single character is absolutely insane. not as in, this one has anxiety, this one is depressed, this one has ptsd (which like, yeah, kinda, in a way), but as in theyre just crazy in a "i cant fucking believe you think this is acceptable behavior" kinda way. at first i legitimately could not tell whether it was supposed to be ironic, it was so over the top. turns out it was not. as characters, we have jordan, max, both their moms, jordans two girl friends, max's two boy friends, max's ex, max's dad, and a bunch of supporting characters with no names. out of all these people, the only one who's a reasonable human being is max's mom. max is pretty okay himself, all things considered, but he also has moments where his behavior is... questionable at best? kind sir why the fuck would you even say that?

-and for the entire first half of the book, youre just annoyed, because you cant see why the fuck everyone SUUUCKSS SOOO MMUUCHH. only halfway in you start to be like oooohh okay its about healing from trauma, which would have made the first half much easier to bear... had i been warned. which i was not. remember how i thought this was just food truck gays? that. and so, first half i give a shit about no one, and then i see whats going on and it quickly becomes the trainwreck analogy -its still sort of a disaster, but i cant look away from it for some reason?

- jordan, on his part, is a walking, endless source of self deprecation. not in a funny way, like haha stand up comedy, but like, annoying. like, in a "i know you just spent 15 hours straight with me by choice but i will still literally be like "who would want to be with someone gross like me anyway" for no reason whatsoever. which like, i get it! i get it. its a thing. but that doesnt make it any less annoying to read. hes also overly dramatic to the point of uncomfiness. like, i got secondhand embarrassment just reading.

- max is the most tolerable of the two, though i still have my bones to pick with him. like the time he thinks to himself "wow i would never say the mean hurtful thing", and immediately after goes and says the mean hurtful thing. he also has moments where hes an absolute king and attempts to slap sense into jordan, and then he has moments where he bends over backwards to please him, even though hes in immense emotional pain himself, because jordan is an ABSOLUTE SNOWFLAKE who really cant take... anything at all. also, one time he actually says, in his narration, "That never even occurred to me, that he had feelings." buddy that seems like a you problem

- all the characters that are supposed to be friends are SO MEAN to each other for no reason, at one point i genuinely thought the arc was gonna be "main characters realize these people suck and drop them". spoiler alert: it did not happen. i ended up taking a liking to max's friends, jordan's still suck. i think it would have been cool if that had been the angle the author had gone with! drop ut shitty friends! imagine you start a book with friends that SEEM good and that the protagonist loves, and as the story progresses you and him both realize they actually suck big time, so by the end hes like, actually fuck you. that would have been iconic.

- there are aspects that i liked. for example, i liked that max's recovery is very much not linear. for example, at one point jordan writes a poem and max is like wow i guess im cured from my ptsd im ready to do The Sex, and then he has a panic attack and he starts therapy. i wouldnt have been cool if he truly had been magically cured -but its cool that the book ends and hes still not over it. liked that.

-in fact his whole sexual abuse arc (hate to call it an arc but thats what it is, thats what the book is actually about on his end) has surprising depth and gentless, and i think it was my favorite part of it. its very... tender? in a way? its very human. theres a lot of conflicting emotions and different stances and confusion and i really liked how dimensional it made him as a character.

- i also liked that he discusses race quite extensively -he's half mexican, so he talks several times about the otherness he often feels in a way that resonated with me, a white girl, which means i am not the parameter to measure this at all, but i liked it regardless. though the one time he describes jordan as "the cutest skinny white boy" just... rubbed me off the wrong way? still gathering my thoughts about that one.

- still, he has an absolutely iconic moment after a very extended hangout where jordan asks him "do you hate me?" (boring, but also, me) and max gives him a whole ass speech about how he OBVIOUSLY does not an if hes going to be asking pitiful shit for no reason even when max is going out of his way to hang out with him, he can just go home, and "no, jordan, im not your babysitter" and honestly? hes a king. hes right and he should say it. loved him for it. it hits different because hes so kind all the time, and this one time you can tell he really just HAD IT. and jordan needed it said like that! good for him! way to go, max!

- all in all max was my favorite character in that hes sensitive and skilled and has more depth than jordan, who's theoretically the deep one.

- jordan is honestly just boring. his main thing is that if he doesnt make 5k in this food truck hes going to lose his house because his mom is the literal worst, and yet we see him wasting large sums of money constantly for no reason because "we'll make more, no biggie" (if you have a grandma who lived through the war or had parents who had and now, in turn, accumulates sacks of flour and doesnt throw away scraps of paper just in case, you know this is not how a person who's struggling financially would behave). he's supposed to be the serious one, but he's actually just dramatic and cynical and not serious at all.

- hes also supposedly a poet, and the poems are right there on the page for us to judge, and honestly, either im bad at reading poetry (likely) or theyre all... bad? which raises the question of whether the author is a real life poet or we're just supposed to pretend these are good for the sake of the suspension of disbelief.

- honestly the most poetic line in the entire book was when max says, in his internal monologue: "I smile at him. He smiles at me. I draw blueberries."

- maybe the real poetry were the simple lines we wrote along the way

- theres a lot of back and forth and things that end up not being elaborated. like, say: at one point max is like, "actually i only like one side of jordan, hate when he gets like this" and then goes on to keep dating him and never bring this up again. and this happens all the time, max does something jordan doesnt like, like inviting him on an exercise date jordan literally agrees to, and for six pages jordan is all "wow i cant believe hes making me do this i feel so betrayed i feel so disconnected from this man Who Is Him" which is like. so unhinged?? right?? and then theyre like "wow this 18 year old boy just saved my entire life i cant imagine existing without him." WHAT DO YOU MEAAANNNN

- theres one line thats so unnecessary ominous for no reason it immediately became my favorite. it goes like this: "I run my hands down his beautiful, alive body." HUH????????????????? I SURE HOpE SO!!!!!

- jordan is also canonically one of the skinny bitches nicki minaj warned us about in the critically acclaimed Anaconda, and yet at one point he lands a punch that dislodges a guy's whole jaw. i love fiction.

- i havent talked about the mom, whos the actual crazy character in this (and i say crazy not as in mentally ill, as i said earlier, just unhinged), and i dont even wanna know what flavor of crazy she's supposed to be. i read in a review it was supposed to be bipolar disorder and boy do i hope it isnt, because if it, terrible misrepresentation. lady's just genuinely unstable and a danger to herself and to jordan and i hated her all the time. which is not... what mental illness does to you. you know? im glad no diagnose was actually mentioned in the book, because id rather think we can just believe she sucks, as people do.

- at one point im expecting like another two chapters because shit literally JUST hit the fan and then its over. i appreciate it now, that its kind of an open ending, but at the time i was just left sitting there like, where is the rest of it tho

- so thats where i stand. did i like it? i cant tell. confused/10.