Where was the romance tho? I was waiting for Tate x Charlie scenes, but they maybe had like a scene together every 5th or 6th chapter.. everything in between they were working or there was drama with Terry or Leah. Even if they had scenes together all they’re talking about is KELLAN. It was Kellan Kellan Kellan Kellan and nothing else, by the time Charlie said ‘I love you’ I was ???? why? when? how? In the end just like in life things don’t always fall into place like puzzle pieces. Sometimes you need to trim edges or force something square into a round hole. But you make it work no matter what. That night in a field of planets absent of stars, he granted my demands, kissing me until my lips bruised and the sun rose over the horizon” terry marchetti 🍺 - one of the 2 redemption arcs. at first, i hated this man because he so callously ditched his son, but then i felt sorry for him as the money from his successful novel ran dry and he became a homeless alcoholic, who had to beg to stay in his oldest son's house. the more i read, the more i learned about terry, and by the end? only a person like charlie can make this awful man into someone worth forgiving. did this coward steal his son's book and publish it as his own? yes. but he helped give darling venom the finish it deserves and made kellan proud. I wondered how the hell I’d noticed that. Hannah got mad every time I’d failed to notice a new haircut, dress, or piece of jewelry.

I’d come here to die because I wanted everyone from school to see. To scar them the way they’d scarred me, leaving an ugly dent inside them that couldn’t be covered with makeup.❞ Here we have the stereotypical emo suicidal boi, the sarcastic and colder older brother who ends up becoming a rich doctor, and the desperate child with sissy issues. Emo and desperate child meet. They form a pact to meet once a year in the roof. Shit happens. Emo boi dies. Desperate child cries. Fast forward a couple years. Desperate child walks into older brother having sex with a woman. She stays while he stares right at her. She mentions she knew suicidal boi. Older brother is suddenly interested. The two aren’t friends but they’re also not enemies. They both carry guilty. So, they form a pact and decide to finish some manuscript emo suicidal boi decided to leave. They catch feelings or whatever. A manuscript is completed. The end.in part 2 when charlotte became charlie we got to see a different side to her, gone was the suicidal girl instead, there was a girl who has learned to be happy in her own skin, yes she was still having problems with her sister but she never gave up on her. charlie is the definition of resilience, this girl fought for her sister's happiness, tate's happiness/their relationship, & for terry to find himself again. If you want to make me suspend disbelief, give me a good reason. And if you can't, spare me some badly written passages from the purported masterpiece. this book sort of reminded me of old LJ shen characters, specifically jude & celian from Dirty Headlines, and hala told me that LJ and Parker are BFF's which is funny, because damn LJ how you gonna let your friend copy your flow, and she did it better than you??? BYE. 😂 To begin my descent into hell, let me enjoy first refilling my memory with the brightest moments of this book!!

Before going into this story, I did my best to avoid all the major spoilers for it. Can't say the same about the spoilers. I ran fast, but they, like athletes on steroids, chased after me even faster... which reminds me of the fact that I was fully prepared for this book to scar my pure, untouched soul with its ugly truths and inevitable tragedies. This author is so talented, in fact, she made so many of the unlikable secondary characters likable for me, which is sometimes a difficult task. The story itself and the writing was so fantastic. If I would have loved the actual romance more, it would have easily been a full five stars, but this still was a great read overall and a strong 4-4.5 stars. This is my first book by this author and it definitely won’t be my last!

Like I mentioned before, I found the romance weak and uninteresting (I'll elaborate in a little, I promise), but I liked the first part -the one where Charlotte meets Kellan-, and I was equally invested both in Tate and his father's disastrous relationship and in the one between Charlotte and her sister. However, I expected the romance to match the mood, and that's where my expectations were met with disappointment, which is why I ended up not loving this as much as I thought I would at first. PS: Will never understand the cover choices of some authors. The tumblr boy on the cover had me expecting a raunchy age-gap romance, not a full on cry fest☠ Welcome to Shh... [Smut, Heroes & HEAs], a reader group dedicated to contemporary Romance & Erotica.