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A review by mousmoulo
Tim Te Maro and the Subterranean Heartsick Blues by H.S. Valley
emotional
funny
lighthearted
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Loveable characters? Yes
3.75
i'll need to let this book marinate in my head for a short bit before i can properly rate it because i have never read something as frustrating faster than this ðŸ˜
(edit: the marination process has been positive, i've mostly kept the goods from this book)
i'm back in my romcom era, and this was perfect for it. very sweet, funny, with genuine chemistry between the characters and no third-act breakup! also some of the conversations on sex, consent, coming out etc were great.
my issue with this book is that there were only two things that bugged me, but they took such a vast portion of it that they were impossible to ignore. in short:
(nsfw discussion ahead)
1)the first half of the book is a very unbalanced compilation of detailed sex talk and more dick jokes than i'm personally able to take, and fade-to-black sex scenes. obviously that latter part makes sense because this is a young adult book about teenagers, but at the same time the talk and jokes around these topics were so detailed and just endless. a good 50% of the book was just horny teenagers being horny teenagers, which is very realistic teenager behaviour, but it also kind of completely beats the point of y/a as an age category. i'm personally very neutral towards how it was all handled, but the utter lack of balance threw me off. "beats the point" is the best way i can possibly describe it, i guess.
2) the miscommunication in the second half... no romcom character has ever been THIS oblivious. it was frankly exhausting to read about.
anyway! despite these two glaringly, painfully ever-present issues of this book, overall i enjoyed it a lot (read it in like a day so... yeah) and i'd happily read more by this author! but i still don't know how i feel about certain parts of it, so there's that.
(watch me come back to this in like a month and give it 4 stars)
(edit: the marination process has been positive, i've mostly kept the goods from this book)
i'm back in my romcom era, and this was perfect for it. very sweet, funny, with genuine chemistry between the characters and no third-act breakup! also some of the conversations on sex, consent, coming out etc were great.
my issue with this book is that there were only two things that bugged me, but they took such a vast portion of it that they were impossible to ignore. in short:
(nsfw discussion ahead)
1)
2) the miscommunication in the second half... no romcom character has ever been THIS oblivious. it was frankly exhausting to read about.
anyway! despite these two glaringly, painfully ever-present issues of this book, overall i enjoyed it a lot (read it in like a day so... yeah) and i'd happily read more by this author! but i still don't know how i feel about certain parts of it, so there's that.
(watch me come back to this in like a month and give it 4 stars)