7 Hours 3 Mins | Harper Audio | Contemporary | 5/04/2021
In this book, the titular Meet Cute Diary is a wildly popular Tumblr blog of supposedly true meet-cutes from transgender couples. In reality, all the posts are from the imagination of 16-year-old Noah Ramirez–who has only ever dreamed of having his own meet-cute.
When an anonymous troll tries to discredit the blog, Noah and a handsome bookseller stage a social media love story inspired by Noah’s fake posts.
The Meet Cute Diary is a refreshing take on the coming of age YA love story that creates room for queer and imperfect teens but… its main romance left me wanting more.
*mild spoilers below*
As Noah gets deeper into his fake relationship he meets Devin, a socially anxious nonbinary teen (who uses pronouns e/em/eir), who shows him real love comes when you least expect it.
This book has one of those super divisive Goodreads pages.
A lot of reviewers hate our main character Noah but I find a truly unlikeable character a nice contrast to the overly earnest YA protagonist. I was rooting for Noah and all his messiness at the beginning but I couldn’t get behind his “endgame” romance with Devin. I think it’s because Lee didn’t fully develop Devin enough as a character. Devin’s main personality traits were eir severe anxiety and doing things for Noah. I thought Devin was a little too subservient to Noah through the book and I can’t imagine they’d be good as a couple of long term. It felt like Devin was clinging to Noah despite how badly Noah treated em because ey had no one else.
Author’s Note
I loved that this story is set up around a Tumblr hoax because I feel like most of the IRL Tumblr hoaxes are just marginalized teens trying to put something good out into the world and then getting in over their head.
I’m a lifelong reader who started blogging about YA books in 2011 but now I read in just about every genre! I love YA coming of age stories, compelling memoirs and genre bending SFF. You can find me talking all things romance at Romance and Sensibility.