Review Detail

WHAT I LOVED:
For teens who attend directly after high school, college is often a new beginning, especially if you’re living on campus or are attending a school far from home. That was certainly true for me on all the above counts. Molly’s journey to come out of her shell is one that rings especially true to me as someone who also wanted to be different after years of being choked by social anxiety in high school. Too bad she’s still too choked up by it to go for her longtime crush Cora Myers.

Alex has a much tougher time of things but is no less relatable. After years of watching her mom drink their money away, she’s looking to make a career as a doctor–something to make her so rich she’ll never worry about money again. College is about survival, not passion. Some of what she goes through with her mom is all too familiar.

She Gets the Girl is a VERY slow-burn kind of romance. Despite short chapters with alternating perspectives and a timeline of about a month, the book’s pacing is at an utter crawl sometimes. It can be hard to keep your attention on it. Due in part to that, it took me almost until the end of the book for me to get invested in Alex and Molly being together–which coincides with when they realize their feelings for one another.

This is not Prolonged Pining: The Novel. It’s enemies-to-friends-to-lovers with a long time spent on the “friends” stage. You certainly can’t say Alex and Molly don’t fit together or have any chemistry because that’s well-established!

FINAL VERDICT:
I feel pretty good about She Gets the Girl being a hit because of Rachael Lippincott’s bestseller status related to Five Feet Apart, but it deserves success on its own merits. It’s the cute, gay college rom-com of your dreams and feels as real as it can get.