From Goodreads:
Rain has taken care of Ethan all of her life. Before she even knew what autism meant, she’s been her twin brother’s connection to the hostile world around him. She’s always prepared—when her father abandons them, when her mother gets sick, when Ethan is tortured by bullies from school—Rain is the reliable, stable one holding them all together. She’s both cautious carer and mad chef, preparing customized meals for her family and posting crazy recipes on her cooking blog.
Each day with Ethan is unvarying and predictable, and she’s sure that nothing will ever change—until one night when her world is turned upside down by a mistake she can’t take back. As her new romance with her long-time crush and her carefully constructed life begins to unravel, she discovers that the fragile brother whom she’s always protected has grown into a young man who no longer needs her. And now, for the first time, she finds that she needs him.
- Basically all the characters. (Except Rain’s twin brother, Ethan.)
- Let’s start with Rain: she’s pretty interesting (she’s a food blogger, she makes up crazy recipes, she’s interested in psychology) but I really disliked her. She’s so mean all the time, especially to her brother!
- And she doesn’t even regret talking about her brother behind his back until he finds out about it.
- I guess her character develops, but I just didn’t like her as a character at all—I wasn’t rooting for her.
- Hope was super annoying. She basically tells Rain that in order to get her crush to like her, she should be “boring” and not talk about her blog. Like, what kind of friend says that?!
- And the mom omg! All she wants is for Ethan to be “normal” and she tries all these things to try and make his autism go away. And she doesn’t take care of her kids, or herself!
- So it was cool that Ethan had autism, because there are barely any ya books with autism rep, but…the rep was kinda questionable. I don’t have autism, so I can’t speak for it, but there seemed to be some underlying messages that are offensive/harmful. Here is an #ownvoices review by one of my favorite bloggers, who explains everything really well.
- I loved that Rain was a blogger! I loved reading about her blog because, ya know, I’m a blogger too. And I could totally relate to her in that regard. In between each chapter, the author includes one of Rain’s blog posts, and that was awesome.
- Ethan was pretty much the only good character.
- Liam, the love interest, was fine I guess.
- It was kind of addictive? I liked the writing style, and I think the author is pretty good at writing
Overall, I wasn’t a huge fan of this book, mostly because of the characters and the problematic messages, but I liked the blogging and writing.
Thank you to the publisher for sending me a copy of this book via Netgalley.
Peace!
♥ Annie
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