i’m sorry but some of you need to be serious about what you’re reading before you start writing think pieces about it. this is a hockey romance. they are literally hooking up basically immediately. that is the tone. that is the genre. like the book is not hiding what it is at any point and yet every other take is “this didn’t have enough depth” “this wasn’t nuanced enough” about topics the story was never trying to deep dive into in the first place.
like yes, it touches on mental health, identity, etc. but it’s not a case study. it’s not trying to be a full, layered exploration of those things. it’s telling a romance story about two guys and their relationship. and i really think a lot of the frustration i’m seeing is people projecting what they want onto the story and then getting mad when it doesn’t deliver that exact version back to them. you can want more representation, more nuance, more depth. that’s fine. go find stories that do that or write them. but acting like the book failed because it didn’t become something it never set out to be is just… not it.
and the whole “the author doesn’t understand her own characters” thing is actually wild when she literally created them, like at some point you have to accept that your headcanon is not the source material. idk it just feels like some of you decided what this story should be, ignored what it actually is and now you’re mad about it.