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** I was given a copy from Ylva Publishing for an honest review.**

This is another good story by Emily O'Beirne. She's just excellent at that - telling meaningful stories of ordinary queer youngsters in quite an extraordinary way.

She picks up moments that usually has been (or probably will be) part of any queer girl growing up - in this case the falling in love with your best friend scenario - and builds up a compelling story around it. Unlike most other authors of this genre though, she carefully steer us away from the 'fairytale' outcome. There usually is more of a sweet/bittersweet feeling to her novels as she honestly tries to tackle some of the real issues of being a queer teen in a more realistic way. And I, for one, appreciate that approach.

However, the general feeling I had of this book was that it was a lukewarm reading.

Now, as I've become used to, O'Beirne protagonists tend to be quite strong, complex and interesting characters. Even if they end up being in opposite sides of the personality spectrum. They can be gentle and yet somewhat insecure like Liza from Points of Departure and end up being profoundly endearing, or they can be a bit of an asshole but with a good heart like Claire from A Story of Now and still be very captivating, because their qualities as well as their shortcomings it's what makes them reliable and interesting as characters.

Unfortunately I didn't felt quite this way about Zel.

Zel was nice. But the bland kind of nice. Good daughter, good friend and probably just absolutely average at anything she does, yet for me she seems to have this almost way too subdued atitude towards life. She acts like a 30 years-old in a 16 years-old body. And I know all about these 'old soul' teenagers out there, I was actually one of them. But the fact remains that they don't exactly make for a very interesting protagonist of a novel in my opinion.

Also, the self-consciousness of the narrative didn't quite do it for me. I might be wrong, as it's been awhile since I read her previous books, but I think this was her first book written in first person and where the main character is constantly breaking the fourth wall to address the readers. And it can be indeed a fantastic writing device, but to work properly it must be executed flawlessly and by a character with a really strong personality and inner voice. Once again, Zel is not one of those characters, in my opinion.

And then there is Prim. Well, if Zel was bland to me, Prim was just absolutely obnoxious. Not even Zel seemed able to defend her atitude properly to the readers, and she was actually the one who was in love with her. Now I get it, most of us have been there, the inappropriate crush on the unapproachable, standoffish, yet profoundly alluring acquaintance or friend. I get that, like I said, that's one of O'Beirne greatest qualities as a writer in my opinion, writing fiction that could pass as a memoir of any queer girl growing up, but then there is also the other side of this equation, the one where just because you can write about something, it doesn't mean you should.

And I am aware that this is mostly a preference thing ("Reviews are opinions, opinions are subjective" and all that...) but for my taste, I found myself a bit disconnected from actually caring for anyone in this story and not only because of the characters, but also because I felt that with the constant flashbacks, the story ended up a bit everywhere, or more precisely not here nor there, since a huge part of this story is actually just Zel recollecting her relationship with Prim in NY. And to be quite honest there was nothing too remarkable about that time to justify the time spent doing so. It's not exactly bad, really. It's just that it wasn't really that intriguing for me, and I also ended up missing that certain sense of urgency that usually comes with stories like this.

Stella on the other hand, was the most interesting character in the story for me. But although she has a very key part to play in this book, her possible growth as a character ends up limited by Zel and Prim story. Which actually makes sense, even if I ended up watching the unfold of why that makes sense feeling quite unenthusiastically about the whole deal.

To her credit, Emily O'Beirne is an extremely capable writer and you can easily notice that there is a perfectly reasonable justification behind all her choices for the direction of her stories, so as a reader, even if you disagree with her choices as a storyteller, you can't say they don't make sense. They do. Even if you don't exactly find the final result of said choices very exciting.

So I actually felt a bit conflicted in rating this book. It is a good book, don't get me wrong, it's just that, I suppose I ended up spoiled by the quality of her previous 3 books and this one ended up a bit on the lower end of my expectations.

3.7 stars in my opinionated, yet honest assessment.