This is an excellent book, probably one of the best I’ve read this year.
I picked up this book on Netgalley when it still have the placeholder cover (just text), so I had no idea what genre it was when I started reading. Tonally, felt like literary fiction, so although I recognised the romance signals, I wasn’t sure if it was going to have a happy ending or not (don’t worry, it has). The characters were compelling enough that I kept reading.
Parker Navarro is an author who writes what sounds like speculative ficiton. He’s a consumate people pleaser and wants to be liked by everyone. Selina Chan is a book critic. She absolutely pans his first book and then, now, his second. Parker meets her at an event and has a go at her. Unfortunately for them both, the encounter is captured on video and goes viral. Selina is prickly and compromising. She doesn’t particularly care about people liking her.
The book is about cancel culture and how online personalities can come across as very different from real life personalities. Honestly, it should be talked about alongside Yellowface as a commentary on publishing and how we market books now. It probably won’t be, because it seem to be being marketed as romance and the world generally considers romance to be a lower art form. It’s a pity. The book is extremely well written and touches on some very interesting points about parasocial relationships.
There is, as I mentioned before, a happy ending (thank goodness) and it’s a genuinely enjoyable read.
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