FIVE STARS FOR EMILY HENRY’S HOT/EXPENSIVE ASSHOLES!!!!!!!! maybe it’s covid, maybe it’s Maybelline, but this book made me literally weep with wonder at our capacity for love and growth and happiness. sometimes you are a snobby bitch in spiked heels and life is so so so hard but it’s worth living anyway.

i loved Nora and Charlie, their nightmare brains, their shared book-scented cologne, their ridiculous banter. i loved the audio production and Julia Whelan’s dumb sexy-hoarse Charlie voice. i loved the Sunshine Falls setting. i loved the third-act conflict between Nora and Libby rather than Charlie (PLEASE, more subversion of the romance third-act conflict PLEASE I'm begging you!!!!) i loved the way you can love someone and still grow apart and want different things and not know if it will be okay and none of that matters in the end because you still love them anyway!!! i LOVE LOVE!!!!!!!!!!! and i LOVE BOOKS!!!!!

some quotes for the mems:
- “I’ve just always wanted to see a shark attack up close. So much blood.”
- Yes, I think. To me, you are the easiest person in the world.
- “What about your heart?” / “Do people like us have those?”
- This is what looking at Charlie is like sometimes: like a gut punch of a sentence, like a line so sharp you have to set the book aside to catch your breath.

swoon, barf, sigh. still probably not as good as beach read because emily henry peered into my little soul for that one but FIVE STARS!!!!!!!!!!!!