This is less a rom-com and more contemporary fiction, in the same way women’s fiction is simply fiction. I absolutely adore adore the deep dive into research process and writing style, how you write to understand life but also to shape it. Augustus and January escape off the pages and become something concrete, which is probably why the underdeveloped aspects of the story feel so much more noticeable in comparison. January’s relationship with her mother is a prop thrown around just to fill the space and the first-person perspective is basically an excuse for the info-dumpy first chapters. It’s more than I imagined (petition for Henry to write the circus novel for real) and simultaneously less