Strong Long-Form Romance. You know those romance tales where someone meets on a plane on their way to their (separate) vacations that happen to be in the same place, fall in love on the plane, and are damn near married by the time they get on the plane back home?
Yeah... this isn't that. At all. This one takes more like 15 years, and has a LOT more growth of both of our lead characters between the initial meeting and the proposal. There is a strong coming of age element here, there is a strong sense of destiny here, but more importantly and one of the strongest features of the tale is that there is a strong sense of "[S]he's *right there*! Get your FUCKING act together!"... except that it truly does take both of them the entire time frame to really get to the point where they *can* be together.
And you know what... sometimes... sometimes that happens in real life too. And those real life stories deserve to see their fictional counterparts too. So I'm glad Wiesner wrote this one, so that these types of stories *can* get out more. Because let's face it, these kinds of romances aren't exactly the typical ones in the genre - and that makes them all the more refreshing and interesting when you *do* find one like this. Very much recommended.