Thank you Netgalley and PenguinTeen for giving me an ARC copy in exchange for a review!

This book made me somewhat sentimental about when we were on the verge of the pandemic. The stocking of toilet paper, the way everyone was confused with no idea what to do or where to begin because we've never been faced with such a situation like the COVID-19 pandemic before. Reading this made me actually... nostalgic? For those times. When the world was fighting for toilet paper, when people were rushing home from their study abroad trip in Europe, when people were making tiktoks after tiktoks from boredom and making dalgona coffee and just being... home. This book kind of made me... miss all of that.

I feel like hello (from here) was a different concept and very different from every contemporary I've read before since it not only reflected a very serious pandemic, but it touched upon what we went through when COVID-19 was on the very tip of the ice berg and we didn't know what to do.

I did like the characters, I found them endearing and actually very relatable. I think we could see a lot of ourselves in Jonah and how he dealt with his constant anxiety and how it peaked over these unknown times. I liked Maxine as well and I liked how very... real her relationship was with her family and her friends, how they talked over Zoom and how she still had to work with her job as a groceries attendant.

The plot was nice and all but it seemed to lack some sort... substance? It seemed very... empty, I guess you could say. Half of it was plot, and half of it was these two teens trying to build a kind of romance over Zoom which I must say was very different and I liked the concept a lot but I think the way it was executed was not for me.

However, I do think that now with everyone's gotten to learn to live during the pandemic and how we're all very used to it, it would make everyone nostalgic for those times when we were just beginning with COVID-19. I think that teens would enjoy this book, especially when COVID-19 is over, future teens can get a glimpse of what we lived like during those times :))

That's all for my review! Thank you so much for stopping by and I promise to upload more content in the future <3

Stay safe and stay healthy! I appreciate you all :D <3

Thank you to PenguinTeen for providing me with an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review. All ideas are my own.

TW's in this Book: mention of COVID, COVID-19 Related deaths, death of a family member, death, panic and anxiety attacks, talk about animals being put down.
Adding onto these warnings, if COVID was an especially hard time for you, please be prepared for this book, as it does take place during the early months of the pandemic.

Wow. Where do I begin with this book? It was amazing, to say the least, and the more I think about it, one of my all-time new favorite books. I will say that I was a little... anxious going into this one. If you don't already know, Hello (From Here) takes place at the start of COVID. As someone who really suffered in the time of early COVID, it was triggering. As someone who also had a relationship during COVID, it was hard to read at some points. As someone who has frequent anxiety and panic attacks, ut was triggering.

But I think that what was so beautiful about this book was the rawness of it. I think that sometimes contemporary romances are written with the idea that love solves all these problems and that mental illness can be cured by finding the right person. That was not the case for this story. This book faced so many issues that teens faced during the time of COVID in a way that was done so beautifully, and again, raw. No character felt one-sided to me, and I could actually relate to every single one of them. It was nice to know that I wasn't alone in how I felt during the pandemic. The relationship between not only our two main characters, Max and Jonah but also every other one portrayed just was done so incredibly well. I felt for every single character and this story did a great job at not masking anything through romance or being in a relationship. It showed two very real and very struggling teenagers trying to make sense of themselves and the world in a crazy time. This story made me feel seen in the ways that I chose to mentally respond to COVID and it made my coping processes feel valid. This book was what got me laughing in the dark days I had while reading this. Because this story just made me feel a little less alone.

This is seriously a book I will remember for the rest of my life. It's one of those stories where you just feel so so much, in every way shape, and form. I would recommend that everyone should read this book (after looking more into the TW's within the story of course). But specifically, I would recommend this book to anyone who struggled during the time of COVID quarantine, specifically teenagers. Huge thank you again to PenguinTeen. I know this wasn't like my normal reviews, but I felt as if I couldn't put the emotions I felt into my usual format.

I really wanted to like this book because everyone's love life suffered a little bit throughout this pandemic. I know mine did. The fact of the matter is that this book was maybe written a little too soon and didn't get as much help as it needed. The plot didn't feel like it was baked all the way and the characters really weren't it for me. I grew to like Max even though I didn't have very positive feelings towards her in the beginning but my main problem I had was with Jonah. He was so creepy in the beginning and just proceeded to be creepy and obsessive over Max for so long but no one seemed to raise any red flags about it? Max didn't even think twice about it and ended up making jokes about it like it was a cute way they met. It was just really unsettling because we know they're young adults but don't seem to be aware of things like this. Not even Max's friends thought it was weird or thought to tell her that Jonah was giving off sketchy vibes and I know when it seems like the world is ending, you do some weird stuff but this was just too uncomfortable for my liking.

Disclaimer: I got this book in exchange for media coverage.

I plan on doing a review on Pop-Culturalist.com so I won’t be talking about this on here but wow this was really good!!