Meet Cute Diary by Emery Lee
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Web ID: 143523585 Thoughts About Meet Cute Diary:
1. This book is going to be so important to so many people When you read this, you can just tell that Lee wrote this with all the love in eir heart for the trans community. Meet Cute Diary has so many layers to it and shows that great things are possible when you let go of your expectations and just kinda go where life takes you. Lee does a great job of balancing the sweet and funny scenes with the tough and emotional ones. MCD's focus on trans joy is a reason in and of itself to pick up the book, but there's so much more to it than that. We get to see Noah and the other characters explore gender, learn from their mistakes, figure out boundaries, and ultimately grow into themselves. It's a wild ride — one that I highly recommend you all hop on. 2. Noah is a messy, complicated character Plainly put, there are times when Noah is selfish, oblivious, annoying, and ultimately a very teenager-ish main character. Noah overspends his parents' money and gets mad when he's cut off. He has trouble communicating with his brother, who he's living with for the summer. He also has trouble in his other relationships, like the one with his best friend Becca, because it's rough now that they're long-distance best friends and it leads to miscommunication and hurt feelings. It's not going to work for everyone, but for me, that just made the story all that much better. I love that we're getting to a point that we can have queer characters, characters of color who are Not Perfect and still thrive because they're human and they deserve it. 3. There's no major focus on transphobia It's a contemporary fiction book, so of course, transphobia exists in this story. Heck, Noah and Devin deal with it on varying levels throughout! But it never becomes the main plot point, and I love that? It's about time we get books about trans characters where their main struggle isn't transphobia. 4. It's such a fun book with a ton of little adventures It mostly starts Noah's new sorta-fake-sorta-real boyfriend Drew taking him all around Denver to show him around and stage cute dates for them to post about on the Meet Cute Diary. Between jumping off cliffs into the water, hikes through the mountains, and more lowkey cafe visits, Noah and Drew have one heck of a time together. But then there's also the 5. I love the way Devin's gender is handled Meet Cute Diary isn't really a coming out story, certainly not from Noah's end, but Devin spends a lot of the book exploring ways to express eir gender. I've seen other point this out, but it's worth repeating that Noah handles it so gracefully. Of course, I'd expect that from someone who's also trans, but it's not something I've seen in fiction before, and to think this could be teens' introduction to exploring gender? Beautiful!
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Customer review from barnesandnoble.com
Great plot, but some things were annoying
this had a great plot and I absolutely adored reading the book, but a lot of things were kind of frustrating. I like how Noah’s character has flaws and is realistic for a teen, but he honestly was a bit selfish and could’ve developed more. As a teen myself, I am aware not everyone is going to be there for me, but Noah is expecting everyone to be there for him and when he’s not there for someone else, he’s mad at them. And he doesn’t even learn that not everyone is going to by your side throughout the story- he pretty much stays the same. The plot was good, but Noah’s character really sucked. He got mad at Drew’s apology but when he practically said a similar apology as Drew’s to his best friend, it was ok? And what really bothered me was that they had to point out everyone’s skin color like it mattered to their personality. Like when someone was rich it had to be “rich white people.” And i loved the representation, but they made it seemed like white people where stereotypical. Like darker skinned people where only people who were trustworthy. And this is coming from a darker skinned person myself. I respect all colors of people. And I just didn’t like that they had to point out someone was white or black because it mattered or something. Also, just because someone supports woman’s rights doesn’t mean there a TERF. It was weird how he just assumed that of someone who said they supported other people too. And when he first met Devin, Noah thought he didn’t support trans people, and when Devin said that e were trans it then made it clear that devin supported? I am cis, but I support. I don’t want people to assume I don’t just because i’m cis. But I loved the plot, and the book, I just kinda hated the main characters development. Noah hurt Devins feelings at the end, but didn’t care and Devin had to make it better themself. Book was good, but Noah sucked. If there was a different main character then it would’ve been a 10/10 book.
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Customer review from barnesandnoble.com