2.5 // I think if you had asked me to rate this book before the 75% mark then it would get a solid 3 or 3.5 but I really hated a lot of stuff towards the end.

The good: an own voices story about two Bengali girls going to high school in Ireland with some relatable friendship and family struggles. Ishu is a great 'gives no shts' character who I related to a lot, meanwhile Hani is much more focused on how her friends perceive her and maintaining friendship far past the point when they become toxic (unfortunately also kind of relatable). I enjoyed reading from both of their perspectives and what little romance happened on page was very cute.

The bad: the fake dating was actually not the cause of most of the drama and plot in the book and the romance was extremely limited. This book is much more about navigating toxic friendships and examining family relationships than a teen rom-com. It's not even very funny (which is not a criticism, just don't expect it).

It was very frustrating to read because of how mean the side characters were. I could believe it for the most part, but at a certain point I just couldn't take it any more and it seemed a bit ridiculous. Spoiler about the friendships: Hani doesn't stand up to her racist, biphobic, manipulative "friends" until near the very end after they've been horrible the entire book and have shown zero redeeming qualities. and Ishu barely says anything either. The friends are so horrible that it's kind of unbelievable just how much sht Hani puts up with and hard for me to swallow that they've been friends since they were very young.

There was also this whole side plot with Hani's dad running for a local election and it didn't really add anything to the story except for unnecessary extra drama. It bloated the novel tbh and was the cause of me giving it such a low rating. Spoiler: if you've read it then it's when she tells her dad she didn't actually go canvassing and he gets mad at her, but it was extremely stupid and added nothing to the book that couldn't have been done in a better and more realistic way.

Final Thoughts: I really wanted to rate this higher, but there was a lot dragging it down. I think if some people are less bothered by the things I was bothered by then I can understand why people would rate it much higher. For me, this was just not the fun, cute sapphic fake dating story I thought I was going to get.