I'm so glad that Ali finally decided to change things up a bit!
I want to start off with the "villain" character.

Though it was still a close friend of the main characters who turned out to be the bad guy, I feel like Florence had a lot more gray area in her characterization than many of Ali's past villains. There were times when the reasonable doubt of why she did the things she did was actually pretty plausible.

I liked seeing that change in her writing and I hope she continues to develop her villains more.
I also really enjoyed the deeper side to this story with Eli's grief and Rue's issues with food insecurity. It added a lot of debut as well as character flaws to both of them that I think Ali kind of lacked in her previous works. Though I wish it had been shown a little more throughout the story, I thought it was still really good to see in general. 
Finally, our main characters. I loved them so much. I loved how they communicated their flaws to each other right away with their little terrible stories. I loved that Eli was Down Bad for Rue immediately. I loved that Rue can be thought of as neurodivergent but the story doesn't center it and Eli loves her exactly as she is even if she thinks she's too awkward or unsociable. They were such a cute couple and I was giggling and kicking my feet so often for the fluff in this book. They were so funny and charismatic and I loved watching Eli protect Rue. And the spicy scenes were so good!
But I think my favorite part is that

Rue actually did the big gesture and fixed things and declared her love for him after she semi-ghosted him for a week. It was definitely needed and I've seen so many romances use the big gesture scene but still have the man do it even when he wasn't the one in the wrong. I'm so glad this one was done right.

Anyway, I loved this book. If you were like me and were getting tired of Ali's cookie-cutter plots, then definitely pick this one up.