gave me the secret history vibes but gay(er)
the character design, flaws and all, made for very well-rounded characters! their relationship makes sense and i sometimes hated that i could relate so well!
but i didn't read it as quickly as i probably should have. idk the pacing at the end didn't work that well for me. still an amazing, and really quotable book!


"Side by side they are twin angels on a headstone, cold and terrible and immutable. They were boys once, he remembers, but they aren't anymore."

"If you paint a masterpiece and then set it on fire, it still would have mattered. If you know you’ve made something beautiful, who cares how long it lasts."

"All they were—all they had ever been—was a pair of sunflowers who each believed the other was the sun."

EDIT: okay so it's been a day, and while the ending didn't quite catch me as i expected, i can't stop thinking about this book! i want to read analyses about the relationship between paul and julian, i want to watch video essays about all of it, there is so much to talk about! a great book to annotate, i think!