Despite all of the criticism that is to come, I will start with what I liked about this book. Molly’s characterization, for one. She felt very real and relatable to me (shout out to lonely friendless high school losers) and was very easy to empathize with. I really liked watching her growth as the story progressed. Her relationship with her mom was also incredibly interesting and heartbreaking, and I honestly wish we had gotten a little more exploration of it. I also really enjoyed a lot of the stuff surrounding Alex’s relationship with her alcoholic mother, which I also found relatable (shout out to children of alcoholics). There were a handful of moments that rang really true for me (feeling overly responsible for her mom’s well-being, feeling rightly resentful but also guilty). Though some of the logistical stuff regarding their relationship didn’t make a ton of sense to me (how are you able to afford groceries being delivered to your mom’s house twice a week when it didn’t even occur to you to get a job when you moved away to college? how in the world are you able to afford a four year university? how did you even find the time to apply to college and make a plan to move away when it sounds like you are a full-time caretaker of a non-functioning alcoholic? do you even have health insurance? does anyone in this story have health insurance?) Anyway, despite the logistical stuff not making sense, a lot of the emotionality of the character rang very true.
And onto my criticisms.
THE CHARACTERS:
Alex
Part of the reason I really ended up not liking this book is because Alex is the kind of character that is designed precisely for me to hate her. Alex is supposed to be poor, and yet she does not always behave as if this is the case; more so, she does not experience consequences that would make this seem believable to me. She is clearly meant to be a character with edge, but I find this edge unbelievable at best and insufferable at worst. Most of her edge is her being mean and immature, or just stuff that doesn’t really make sense, like the fact that she’s somehow worked at a bar since she was 15 years old. This is lazily explained and also annoying because it feels like an attempt to, again, give Alex some edge, when it would have been more realistic and relatable to just make her work at Dairy Queen. Alex is, as I said, mean and immature, but it’s because she has trauma--which like, fair enough, if she ever bothered to apologize for her behavior, but I’m pretty sure she apologizes a total of once at the very end of the book, and her love interest kisses her before she can even finish giving the apology, so do with that what you will. And though I enjoyed some of the stuff with the alcoholic mom, I honestly found it intensely frustrating that that storyline was tied up as neatly as it was. Maybe I’m just bitter that a nice man who owns a food truck and is secretly very wealthy never paid for my mom’s rehab in full without any expectation that I pay him back, or maybe that plotline is just fucking ridiculous. Or maybe both can be true. Who’s to say?
Molly
I genuinely liked Molly’s character until the very end. I hated that she ended up apologizing to Alex for things that did not necessitate an apology. I hated that she turned suddenly very immature at the end, and despite Cora being nicer to her than Alex ever was, she somehow could not imagine going on without Alex.
THE STORY:
Here is where I give my silly little speech on enemies-to-lovers. Because listen--I love enemies-to-lovers. It is one of my favorite tropes when done well (emphasis on the when done well). In my opinion, enemies-to-lovers works best when our main leads have some kind of misunderstanding and ultimately work through that misunderstanding by getting to know each other, usually becoming better and/or healthier people than they were at the beginning of the book. You want them to end up together because you know both characters will be better for it. Enemies-to-lovers does not work so well when one person is just an asshole and the other is not. Which is my problem with SGTG.
The first scene in which our love interests meet is at a party. Molly is socially awkward and clearly a little uncomfortable, though she is taking some solace in the fact that her long term crush, Cora, is being very nice to her. Alex is drinking and having a fine time. They are playing a game of Never Have I Ever with a large group of people. Molly, who has never done anything, keeps winning, and Alex, who has done lots of cool things, keeps losing. Alex, who assumes Molly must be judging her (despite any evidence of this), embarrasses Molly by saying, “Never have I ever been a virgin at 18,” which is, you know, a shitty thing to do a person you’ve never met before and who has done literally nothing to you. Not only does everyone laugh at Molly, but Alex finds her joke so funny that she literally shakes with laughter. And like, here’s my thing: this is not a misunderstanding so much as it is Alex jumping to conclusions and being an asshole. There is no larger explanation for why she did this other than she felt bad about herself and decided to be mean to a stranger about it. What makes it worse for me is that while Alex later realizes this was wrong and feels really bad about it, she doesn’t actually apologize. She just offers to help Molly get with Cora. And this kind of sets up the overall vibe of the book.
I get that SGTG is meant to be vaguely similar to She’s All That--but to be be fair, I didn’t really like She’s All That, either. I’m just not particularly compelled by the idea of making over a person who didn’t really ask you to do that (especially when that person is already a conventionally pretty feminine woman who simply wants to be feminine in a more acceptable way . . . did I mention this book is overwhelmingly cis and feminine?). Alex constantly makes little digs about Molly, from what kind of frozen yogurt she eats to the fact that she likes rollerskating (for the love of god, Alex, what is so wrong with rollerskating?). She intentionally makes her late for class, she criticizes her clothes, and she doesn’t seem to understand the genuine difficulty that Molly has in social interactions. Honestly, this whole book feels very He’s picking on you because he likes you! and I had a very hard time getting past that, especially because Molly is characterized as having low self-esteem, and I found it fairly unbelievable that Alex was somehow managing to make her feel better about herself, rather than worse.
There is one scene in particular that I have to talk about simply because it encapsulates everything I dislike about this book. Allow me to set the stage: Molly’s crush, Cora, plays rugby. Alex has told Molly to meet her at a specific location at a specific time and to “dress comfortably”, but when Molly asks her to elaborate, she refuses. So Molly shows up to their spot wearing a t-shirt and jean shorts and sneakers, and Alex then has the audacity to ask, “What the hell are you wearing?” This is all supposed to be in good fun, I’m sure, but if someone gave me no warning that we were going to rugby tryouts, a notoriously physical and dangerous sport, and I was not a very physical person, and also my crush was going to be there, I would lose my mind (but maybe that’s just me). Anyway, they’re running across a field to what Molly still doesn’t know is rugby tryouts, and Molly makes a joke. This is the exchange.
“Is this the step in your plan where you tell me I need to get in shape and then we hit the gym? Because I have to tell you, I’m not big on exercise and--”
“What?” She stops walking and looks over at me, her facial expression all twisted up like I just offended her big time. “No. Why would I ever tell you something like that?”
“Seems exactly like something you’d say,” I reply, shrugging off her overreaction.
“You know what, Molly? I know I’m fucking pretty, and yeah, I like to flirt maybe a little too much, but I’m not the self-absorbed, shallow bimbo that everyone thinks I am. That you seem to think I am.” (165-166)
I wish I could say that there is any context that makes this scene make sense, but there just isn’t. I cannot for the life of me understand how Alex jumps from this extremely inane joke to ‘Molly is calling me a stupid bimbo.’ Even worse, after this exchange, Molly apologizes and genuinely seems to feel pretty bad about judging Alex (even though, as far as I can tell, that’s not what happened in this scene? She just made a joke about getting in shape? Which is fair given that Alex is wearing workout clothes and refused to tell Molly where they were going????) Alex is still upset but shrugs it off. There is no leadup to this conversation, no scenes in which Molly assumes Alex is judging her body, no scenes in which Alex says that she’s sensitive about people thinking she’s superficial (which, given some of her actions, I think it’s fair to say that she is a little superficial). It’s also not as if Alex has a track record of being very thoughtful about other people’s feelings, which makes it even weirder that Molly is expected to apologize (and does, multiple times) for making what is ultimately a fine joke, when Alex continuously makes fun of her throughout the entire book. Alex’s behavior in this scene is over the top and unfair to Molly, and yet the book genuinely pushes the idea that Molly was somehow in the wrong here (to the point that Molly eventually says she behaved no better than a man who sexually harasses Alex while she is at work--I wish I were joking). Like I can see the conflict that the book was trying to create here (blonde girl is too pretty, nerdy girl is too judgy) but it just doesn’t pan out and makes the relationship seem really unbalanced. Also, as a side note, the line, “I know I’m fucking pretty” is unintentionally one of the funniest things I’ve ever read. Will be using this line anytime someone tries to criticize me.
My last issue with this story is that I think the subject matter feels far too serious and complicated for how easily it’s wrapped up. Alex may have an alcoholic mother and years of trauma to work through, but she ended up in a relationship with one of the first people she met at college, so doesn’t that just cancel out? Molly may have a mother dealing with deep-seated internalized racism and is finally overcoming her overwhelming loneliness, but now she’s dating someone who is vaguely mean to her most of the time, so isn’t everything solved and put away? The book’s message just rubbed me the wrong way, and while I can see why people would enjoy it (mainly gay people who liked She’s All That), I am simply not one of those people.
So, you know. Two stars.