DNF 12%

I was immediately drawn to the pretty, soft cover and the synopsis made me think this was a book I absolutely needed to have in my life between transfem MC written by transfem author and nonbinary love interest. Unfortunately, as others have noted, this reads extremely young, which in and of itself isn’t a bad thing and even can be enjoyable, but that combined with all the exposition and explanations and the shrug emoji makes me feel like I’m the wrong audience. I don’t enjoy having everything explained in a book (probably a by-product of growing up on fantasy) and I felt like it interrupted the flow of the story. I was hoping this would be something cute and sweet and quick to start my day, but unfortunately this just did not work for me.

I’m a bit sad because I really wanted to love this book. I fell in love with the cover when I first saw it and the description sounded like something I would like.

The book started with trigger warnings and spoiler warnings which is always good to have, especially when it comes to sensitive topics like the book deals with.

The story felt really fast paced and a lot of things happened in a very short time period and the story had a lot of side characters which I sometimes got mixed up. It was just a lot of people for such a short book. Some characters felt like there a single one but were two completely different characters with the same character traits. It also felt in a lot of moments that something is missing and that the story was rushed.

Sadly I also didn’t really like the writing. The story was really descriptive and it felt like half of the book was just the characters talking with each other and really long descriptions of random outfits or interests. The book also had random smileys through the story which took me out of the reading flow.

I don’t have any experience on being trans and can’t comment on if the representation is good or not. It felt realistic to me. On some aspects felt the story too forced. Sophia had to mention every other time she was talking about her friends that x is a “lesbian but is acting straight” and that y is “straight but acts lesbian” or in general that someone is straight or lesbian etc while it was already mentioned ten pages before.

I understand why the book ended the way it ended but it was also a bit annoying. I still want to read the next book in the series and see where the story is going. I would have loved to enjoy the story more than I did.

I got this as an arc on Netgalley and it has since come out. It's a good start to a series of novellas that seem to focus on comphet for trans girls. It was mostly well written but a bit too descriptive which I hope will be polished out in the rest of the books (a lot of person - action - emotion-ly). I hated the ending but for what it is trying to do for later books I understand what the author is trying to do here. Definitely more for younger teenagers but much needed.

I was immediately drawn in by that beautiful cover. The soft colors, the visibly nonbinary character, the cat?? It's beautiful, and the title itself is very soft too. This is overall a feel-good queer romantic story with an (almost) entirely queer cast, so I think that cover suits it very much.

You might find the book a bit frustrating to read if you're older than 16, though. Sophia is SUCH a teenager, sometimes in an awkward way. Most of her personality is being trans and being a girl, which happens when you've just recently come out and still figuring out your identity. She says dumb things, she curses for no reason, she thinks sexist gender roles are okay as long as she's the girl in the equation, etc.

Moreover, the random emojis in the text and the little explanations about slurs and pronouns quite literally brought me out of the story. A lot of this book makes more sense if you're reading it as a journal Sophia is writing, but that doesn't quite fit either, because the present-time narration of daily events doesn't match the journal style. So, it's definitely unconventional.

The half dozen author notes at both the beginning and the end felt a bit excessive, too. Overall, this felt as much like an education booklet/Trans 101 than a romantic story.