I finished the book and wrote this review 15 days ago at the time of posting this lol and I don't feel so strongly anymore but it's here so here you go:

I do lean more towards liking this than disliking it but I need to let a few things out:

This girl was absurdly naive about New York for her supposed age, like one of the most ubiquitous stereotypes about it is that everyone's mean and there are rats. But when she sees a rat in a back alley, cracks start to appear in her image of New York or whatever. Idk man but there are rats everywhere, and I don't live in New York. I once even saw a mouse in my kitchen and I'd say I live in a nice house. IDK I'm just saying Ratatouille is a very popular movie about French chefs is all I'm saying.

Anyway, what happens at the end is always how I come away feeling about the book, and I just didn't love the ending. Like I was waiting for her to brush off Zach for her real New York boy as much as the next person but for her realization that she wants Ben to be because she realizes Zach's had girlfriends and been living his life over the past year and faults him more than is honestly reasonable for that ("I can't even look at him!") is not the way. It's reasonable to have dated other people and his explanation is fine to me, nothing to get outraged about, she's just mad because they hadn't seen things the same way because they didn't actually know each other that well and idk it feels like she's still being immature and more importantly like that's the reason she finally went and chose Ben is just kind of not romantic. Also going back home at the end honestly felt like giving up even if it shouldn't have, and in line with the "she's immature" thing, it felt like she was assigning the worst possible intentions to everything her mother said the whole book when her mother has seemed nice the whole time. Like this is all fine, there are allowed to be books about naive people who are completely confident that life is gonna go their way and completely devastated when that doesn't come true, but just know that's what you're getting into I guess.

French Kissing in New York - Likewise Book Reviews

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