Liz is determined to make Michael into the rom-com hero of her love life; she believes this would make her mother proud.

Today her braids were all pulled back into a ponytail, but instead of looking messy like when I wore a ponytail, it showed off her cheekbones. It would have been great to have more background establishing the conflict between Liz and Joss, it lacks a bit of emotional impact because the reader does not get to know Joss very well. Liz’s mother died a few years ago and one of the things that I think this book does really well, was her grief. See, Liz’s forever crush, Michael, has just moved back to town, and—horribly, annoyingly—he’s hitting it off with Wes. The film’s ominous, sharp cello leitmotif, “Lux Aeterna” from British industrial composer Clint Mansell and the famed Kronos Quartet, has become such a shorthand signifier of emotion that it’s almost cliché.I thought Lynn Painter did friendships, Liz’s grief over her mother and her complex feelings about her stepmother as well as romantic chemistry really well.

Mark Darcy saying Oh, yes, they fucking do while kissing Bridget was, of course, as swoony as hellfire, but it wouldn’t have been so oh-my-God-worthy if not for Van Morrison’s “Someone Like You” playing in the background. He teeters between abject disgust for his human prey, desperation, madness, and a terrifying blankness behind his eyes. But through late night talks in the back yard, stolen glances and slips in time where it feels like Wes’s annoying habits aren’t staying all that annoying, Liz sees something else: a future she didn’t see written in her script. I appreciated that she acted like the child she is, since so many YA books have kids acting with adult maturity. And while she’s struggling to cope with the loss of her mom, she pretty much pushes her stepmother Hannah, who is actually really cool, off to the periphery of her life and refuses to let her be a part of any of Liz’s senior year milestones.The more Liz schemes with him, the more she’s forced to examine the difference between what she thinks is good for herself and what actually is— and part of facing that means facing her past.

Liz daydreams about securing a happily ever after of her own and thinks the perfect opportunity for one has presented itself when Michael, her childhood crush, moves back to town.The protagonist, Liz Buxbaum, explains in the Prologue that romance movie binge-watching is a tradition she and her late mother shared. She makes it her mission to go with him to prom, even though her best friend Jocelyn (Joss) warns about romanticizing him. In the book, Hemingway penned a left-leaning interpretation of the proto-noir movement of the 1930s, imagining a struggling sea captain with a family who resorts to murder and a life of crime while making ends meet between Cuba and Key West.