Read with Fern

“A former sorority girl starts a prestigious poetry MFA program only to discover that one of her fellow grad students is her high school crush-turned-nemesis—​who can’t stop writing about her.”

You Between the Lines, Katie Naymon

⭐⭐

Rating: 2 out of 5.

My main issue with this book is that none of the characters are developed, which means the romantic plot fell completely flat. We spend the entire book inside the mind of Leigh, the main female character. Even after spending 10 hours with her, I had no concept of her as a person except that she’s an extreme people-pleaser. And that’s because there’s nothing more to Leigh than being an extreme people-pleaser. Sure, she likes the color pink, Taylor Swift, and hating on straight white men. Those interests have nothing to do with character development, but are constantly recounted like they will ensure an instant connection between the reader and Leigh. 

But if Leigh is flat and one-dimensional, Will’s character is non-existent. Leigh doesn’t actually know anything about him, beyond that she’s been in lust with and hated him for a decade. In turn, as a reader stuck in Leigh’s mind, there’s nothing to learn about Will. And because Naymon cannot show, only tell, there’s nothing to glean from Will’s presence that would add to his character. There’s a point near the end where Will reveals that pretty much everything he does, from the MFA program to outfits to haircuts to breathing, is a bid for Leigh’s attention. There’s nothing more disappointing that discovering a romance character exists purely to be perfect for the main character. 

My secondary issue with this book was how much it tried to remind me of other books. This truly could’ve started as a fan fiction version of Beach Read, exploring Gus and January’s college years. So much of this book was trying to replicate dry banter with a deep undercurrent of yearning, which many other romance authors excel at. Unfortunately, all of those authors also took the time to create fully-developed characters, which leads to a palpable chemistry that pops off the page. Instead, Naymon left the reader with two characters perpetually stuck in high school, incapable of chemistry. The only emotional confessions that felt slightly genuine were when Leigh and Will fought, which left me feeling even more convinced that this was just a story of rivals, not rivals to lovers.

I truly pushed myself to finish this book, waiting and waiting for any sort of revelation or change that would give these characters the tiniest redemption arc. Instead, I was stuck with a narrator so unlikable that I literally screamed at her while driving and listening to the audiobook. Leigh is so self-absorbed that she thinks her parents’ divorce is because they don’t like her. She spends a copious amount of time haranguing the “straight white men” and the “poetry girls” in her MFA program, saying that she has to work harder to get recognition. Yes, as a straight white woman in an MFA program who refuses to read classic literature, I’d assume it’s harder to get your peers and professors to take you seriously. Leigh also bounces between thinking she’s a fraud in her program that doesn’t deserve to share feedback to being convinced she deserves the most prestigious opportunity in the program. 

I read over a hundred books a year. I did this as a kid, stopped by the time I was in high school, and picked the habit back up in my mid-twenties. As I got started again in my mid-twenties, I made some active choices. I wanted to read books outside my comfort zone, which included genres I didn’t naturally gravitate towards and books with unlikeable or morally gray characters. In the past 4 years, I’ve read a variety of books with a breadth of truly unlikable main characters. This book is in the Top 5 for worst main characters I’ve experienced. 

Saying all of this, I know that a lot of people loved this book. I’m sure there’s a lot of overlap with people who loved The Secret History and other academic-based novels. This book just absolutely rubbed me the wrong way in a way I rarely experience.

Thanks to Netgalley, Forever, and Hachette audio for the free advanced audiobook in exchange for an honest review!