This book describes itself as “snarky and romantic, I Hope This Doesn’t Find You is Never Have I Ever meets To All the Boys if Lara Jean wrote hate emails instead of love letters” and I couldn’t think of a better way to describe it. I’ve read Ann Liang’s other books, If You Could See the Sun and This Time It’s Real, and she hit this one out of the ballpark, as always. I literally could not put it down; it was such so much fun to read, and I experienced a whole range of emotions while reading it. Five stars!

If you’ve read my anticipated releases for 2024, you’ll know that I’ve been eyeing this book basically ever since it was announced. And this book was everything I wanted it to be and more. It had the major tropes like academic-rivals-to-lovers and forced proximity and micro tropes, like Julius helping Sadie out when she wasn’t feeling too well, and Julius talking about Sadie to his family.

I really enjoyed getting to know the characters. I found Sadie to be endearing and quite relatable at parts. While I first thought that Julius was too cold and kind of annoying, I came to love him as well. I loved how the audience got to see the side characters grow and develop as much as the main characters.

One thing that I love about Ann Liang books is how they include other deeper themes. In IHTDFY, Sadie struggles a lot with people-pleasing, especially at her own expense or comfort. This results in her having to grow up too fast, blaming herself for things that aren’t in her control, and having to balance all the demanding parts of her life. As the book progresses, Sadie becomes more comfortable with speaking her opinion and standing up for herself. With Julius, we see that he often gets compared with, and often outshined by, his perfect older sibling, who has essentially belittled Julius his entire life.

There were also some similarities to If You Could See the Sun. For example, both books were academic rivals-to-lovers, the main characters had Chinese heritage, and the FMC carrying the weight of familial expectations. However, I liked how it didn’t feel like a copy-and-paste situation, which is apparent with other authors.

One part I wasn’t the biggest fan of was how Julius was described. I was reminded of his black hair and his cold, almost-black eyes almost every time he was mentioned. Although I appreciate descriptions of characters to enhance the reading experience, it could feel like a bit too much sometimes.

In summary, I loved this book so much that “love” feels too weak of a word!