An attempted When Harry Met Sally for the modern world. It isn’t, but nothing is.
Plot: Ari is an unsuccessful comedian who is secretly fucking her roommate when her apparent boyfriend, a spoiled chef named Josh, shows up to make her dinner. They hate each other on sight. They meet again, by chance, over several years, and eventually find friendship, but these two like to throw sticks into their own spokes too much. Shenanigans ensue.
I don’t really look into books much, which has come back to bite me in the ass many a time. This is one of those times. I saw the pitch and went for it. I had not realized this started out Reylo fan fiction, and that would likely have been plenty for me to nope out. This book is written for a specific audience and I am not that audience.
Few things of note however: despite its origins, Josh is not problematic. He is just a rich white guy not aware of his privilege and somewhat autistic-presenting, not, say the sort of guy who might kill your family. There are critiques of him being relatively two dimensional, but I think a fairer interpretation is that he is the type of person with singular focus and a very rigid way of looking at the world. Oh and of course he’s a sexual dynamo and this definitely makes sense given the rest of his personality and life experience.
Ari is a different story. She is no Rey. She is no Sally. She just sort of sucks. It’s not creating a complex character by just creating a loser who is scared of commitment. I was an avid pothead in my 20’s, and still regularly enjoy a toke. I don’t judge. But Ari’s entire personality is being an avid pothead who sleeps around and betrays the trust of everyone around her only to weep in confusion about why everyone keeps leaving her. I fundamentally don’t understand why anyone would want to keep her around and she isn’t much better by the end of the book.
Beyond finding one half of our leads insufferable, I also found the characterization surprisingly weak considering that there are no external conflicts, so the entire weight of the story rests on buying into who these people are and their very unlikely connection. First, we never really learn how these characters became who they are. Ari’s entire life is being an aimless loser who spends a shocking amount of evenings on the couch at home for a person with multiple side hustles and a supposed dedication to a career that only happens at night. Yet she has very little pop culture knowledge. Jesus how much time is she spending on masterbation? Meanwhile Josh, who as I’ve mentioned, is basically a horse with blinders on and the only thing he finds fulfillment in is cooking, yet he’s got a comprehensive pop culture background. Ari’s clearly carrying tons and tons of trauma relating to abandonment, but it barely gets explored at all, it’s just a convenient plot device to drag out the story.
Ari and Josh have nothing in common, and this shows in their conversations. Their relationship doesn’t evolve organically, they just make random decisions to deepen a relationship and we’re supposed to buy it, because time has passed? Their connection never seems to me more than that of casual acquaintances.
I see this pairing ending in about 60 years of abject misery, with neither being willing to admit they fucked up again.
I will say, I did it in audiobook format, and I think that’s what saved this book from the DNF pile, because the narrators REALLY committed and brought a lot of emotional pathos I don’t think the source material earned.