I did really enjoy this, as I do with all of Hazelwood's books, but I had some issues that prevented me from rating any higher.

this book is YA. Hazelwood does call it upper YA or NA because of the ages of the characters, but to me that doesn't matter because regardless it's being sold in the YA section.

this book starts off with one of the main characters, Nolan, freshly 18, saying that he has been called a sex symbol. implying that he has been called that before he turned 18. this is gross!

The other main character, Mallory, is constantly hooking up with someone. now I really wouldn't care about that (kind of. we'll get into that) if this were in an adult romance. live your life idc. but this is a YA book. can we not hyper sexualize teenaged characters and encourage teenagers to do this? It feels so icky.

okay, so this character was gonna screw around anyway. whatever. can we at least include conversations about safe sex? the most we got was her grabbing a condom. again, this is just horrible to be promoting to teenagers.

that's not even it when it comes to my complaints about this one aspect. Mallory is bisexual. I do not know Hazelwood's sexuality and do not want to speculate. But writing a bisexual character as someone that would have sex with anyone that talks is playing into the really harmful stereotype. I'm sure it wasn't her intention, but as we all know, intention means nothing.

things I did not care about that might bother others:
- the unrealism. ain't no way the events in this book would even happen a little. idc it's fiction baby
- the pop culture references. it's a YA contemporary. it didn't seem to have any more references than any other YA contemporary. I think the complaints are coming from people that don't read the genre
- the fact that Darcy is meant to be 12 but speaks and acts no younger than 18