Omg the beef I have with this book!

But first let’s start with the good things. I decided to go for the audiobook at the recommendation of some of my most trusted booktokers and I’m so glad I did. This has to be one of the funniest books I’ve ever listened to. Alexis Hall has shown me before what a unique and hilarious humour he has. It’s truly a laugh-out-loud level of humour.

However it was Will M. Watt that brought these characters to life.

To be honest I didn’t expect the strong Scouse accent. But as a Derry Girls lover it was a wonderful surprise. As English is not my first language, I did have to listen to this while reading the ebook, but I didn’t mind the hassle, it was so worth it! Sam Becker as a protagonist was so relatable and hysterical. Alexis’ humour combined with Will’s narration… I could listen to this for hours (and I did lol)

Another aspect I really liked and it’s related to the top-tier comedy of this story is Jonathan’s family. What a variety of characters that brought such interesting dynamics to the story! Sam’s POV was funny all on its own, but Jonathan’s big family were also hilarious as fuck.

Besides Jonathan's fanily, the other side characters were also so good and relatable. I was laughing so hard because of Sam's staff and their whole shenanigans.

However, that's pretty much all I liked about the book. Now let’s move on to the many reasons why I can’t give it any more than 3 stars.

The romance… or should I say lack thereof? Oh my fucking god, it was zero! I couldn’t believe for the life of me that these two were in love. In my opinion, Jonathan was too much of an asshole for me to buy that he liked and was in love with Sam. He treated him awful for far too much time.

This may go into spoiler territory, but something else that really bothered me is

how long Sam took to tell Jonathan the truth. What do you mean we were past the 90% mark and still nothing? LIKE WHAT DO YOU MEAN? WHYYY?

And because of that, Jonathan’s response and forgiveness afterwards felt rushed and lacking. I needed more! I wanted angst, pleading, intense conversations about trust broken. But we had none of that.

Also as a side note, the way Jonathan found out the truth was so unnecessarily cruel?

I expected it to be like the movies, where they find out while overhearing the liar talking with someone else, or from another person. But why did it have to be like that? Why did you have to have his whole staff gossiping about this scheme and making fun of their boss?

Something I found weird was

the whole omission of Sam’s family for it to be revealed in the last chapter what happened to his family. There was so much potential to have him be a more flesh out character with more depth if it was brought up and talked about earlier. The real reason he moved, why it made sense for him to quit his job so easily (he was avoiding working as a plumber because it reminded him of his dad).

About 80% of it I was so tired. The wittiness and humour were all that kept me going instead of DNFing.