The Cassandra Complex follows Cassie as she travels through time to try and mend her relationships, build romantic connections, and attempt to make more sense of the world around her. It is written in a feel-good, bubblegum style that is super digestible and designed to leave you with fleeting satisfaction. It is tied up with the bow of Cassie realising her friends, family are the true things that make her life worth living. I enjoyed the exploration of Cassie's neurodivergence and it added context to her choices regarding time-travel- a desire to be seen as normal and to fit in. Ultimately what I loved about this book was the cast of side characters. As Cassie changes her behaviour as she time-travels. you get to see how each character responds. These responses were well-considered and helped form the side characters into loveable, valuable additions to the novel. I particularly liked the portrayal of female friendships in the story as they did not feel like the typical quirky best friend with no depth. 

Ultimately the ending of this book betrays the entire message and theme. In this cheesy style of writing, often the message of the book is much more 'show and tell' than subtly transformative. This book is no different, Cassandra has these epiphanies and explains them to the reader in great detail. We are told repeatedly through her lessons in time travel that Cassie shouldn't be ashamed of who she is, she should live life fully and as herself, and take time to see the best in her friendships. Then the ending completely abandons this for the purpose of ending the book with a bang! It simply does not suit this book and honestly makes the whole thing fall flat. 

Also, it does this cheesy thing of breaking the forth wall by Cassandra acknowledging that this is a book? I don't why I hated that so much, but please leave that trope in middle-grade fiction.