I’m glad it did find me. This book was so, so good!! I couldn’t put it down, and I’m not exaggerating, seriously. I finished it in about 4 hours over two days and loved every second I spent reading it.
This is a YA romance book based on the story of the two top students in the year. I’m not exactly sure what country the school is in, but they’re in their last year. Anyway, the two students, Sadie and Julius, hate each other at the beginning of the book, but by the end, that all changes. I find that it’s really difficult nowadays to find a good book like this that doesn’t involve unnecessary (and in my opinion, unwanted) ‘spice’. I was recommended this book on Instagram due to its lack of such scenes and I instantly went ahead and read it, I’d urge you to do the same too.
Basically, Sadie is a massive people pleaser and will do all she can to make others lives happy rather than her own. Behind this friendly facade, she writes emails on her school account where she expresses her anger, but obviously she doesn’t send them. That is until one day she leaves her laptop unattended in history class and somehow all the angry emails she’s written in the past 10 years send to their recipients. Some students get more emails than others, Julius gets more emails than the others. Sadie had written tens of emails to Julius over the years, and in one day he gets sent them all.
The result of this catastrophe is that the majority of the school, bar her best friend Abigail, hate Sadie. Not only does everyone turn on her, but as co-captains of the school, her and Julius are forced to work together on extra projects until they show they get along well enough to keep their positions.
I don’t want to give too many spoilers, but by the end of this process when the principle decides they can go back to their own lives, the two had grown strangely close. Their last task together was to choose a location for the end of year trip, and they settle on some lakeside cabins.
Some stuff goes on at the retreat, again I don’t want to give too many spoilers, but as the book finishes, Sadie and Julius end up together. They definitely should have as well.
I honestly loved this story so much, the only thing I could ask for it to improve on would be for there to be more of it. Sadie and Julius were quite well developed characters for such a short book, which made it an enjoyable read, yet the precision at which details were included was something I admired as it didn’t feel cramped with useless ideas and characters.
I would love to read the same book but from Julius’ point of view because I feel it would make their story so much more interesting to see it from both sides. Although, I can’t, but what I did do as soon as I finished reading was search every other book Ann Liang has written and add them to my ever-growing list of books I want to read.
If this is the type of genre you’re interested in, I would 100% recommend this book. I cannot stop thinking about it. It’s so good.
★★★★★
p.s. this isn’t the 3rd book I’ve read this year, I’m just still behind on reviews from ‘23 and ‘24 - oops
