listen, in an ideal world, my blueprint for comparison when reading a friends to lovers would be the song of achilles. right??? not the death part, but like, childhood to adulthood, the pining, the *clenches fist* yearning, the poetry of it all, the absolute devotion, the beautiful, magical, delicious prose!!!! but you see: that would simply be unfair. that would be like expecting every book i read has maggie stiefvater level worldbuilding. which, like. unfair! right? so you know what? when it comes to friends-to-lovers, this one just might become my actual, reachable blueprint. anything below this will simply not have done it for me. anything above it will be a pleasant surpise!

strictly speaking, its cliche as fuck, but guess what: thats what i fucking wanted!!! thats what i expect of a friends to lovers!!! i WANT all the subtropes!!! give me the theres-only-one-bed, give me the oh-my-god-they-were-roommates, give me the -but-it-will-ruin-our-friendship, give me the i-love-him-but-like-heterosexually-i-think, give me the hes-so-hot-wait-hold-the-fuck-up, give me the this-is-definitely-jealousy-but-we-pretend-we-do-not-see-it. forced proximity!!!! the naturality of it all!!! the banter!!!!!! the panicked gay vs confident gay!!!! with a twist!!!! the misunderstandings!!!!!!! if youre someone who needs something new and funky on eveyr book, sure, this may not be for you, but for those who look for specific tropes out of sheer fascination for them -this is what we want. its in high demand and its NOT AS ABUNDANT AS YOU WOULD THINK ACTUALLY. this is something fanfic writers get right and authors often do not -sometimes we do want the cliche!!! not every story has to be groundbreaking!!! for the love of god give me some classic tropes!!!

also, and i say this with utmost delight: the slow burn of it all, my dudes. when i tell you this is the blueballs book of my dreams!!! its not ABSOLUTE bc shit starts going down about halfway in, but it doesnt get SOLVED solved until the very end and the whole time i was ON THE EDGE OF MY SEAT!!! and like. i got so involved, too. both main characters are likeable in different ways, and both of them frustrated me in their obliviousness (complimentary), though as always i do have a favorite, and its kai because hes a soft idiot. and as the pining, panicked gay in question, i am morally obligated to cheer on him, so every time he was all !!!!!!!!!!! inside, i just got butterflies, man. its about the yearning in this house!!!!!!!

i really dont have a lot more to say, have i not raved enough? though i will mention that it could have done with one more revision -i caught some syntactically confused sentences that would have benefitted from an extra pair of eyes. and i wasnt the biggest fan of the prose, not because there was anything inherently wrong with it, but because it was a bit flat at times. but you know what? i can absolutely bypass that because i had a god damn blast.