Icebreaker

by A. L. Graziadei

[lessthelonely]

4/5 stars.

I’m back to the awful habit of not reviewing a book as soon as I finish it, plus I didn’t take that many notes on this book, either. Oh, and this post is probably not getting proofread since I’m writing it like 3 days before needing to post it. Don’t we have fun here?

Anyways, since I finished all the physical books I got for Christmas, I’m back to reading on my Kindle, which is almost nostalgic. I devoured books last Summer thanks to it. And I’m even thinking of rereading some of them since I found a lot of favorites during that time.

Anyways, I read this book over a week.

Let’s talk about the first big seller in this one: enemies to lovers. Here’s the thing about enemies to lovers, they don’t have to hate each other. They don’t have to that far or nearly as far as that. All I want out of enemies to lovers is bickering and that it lasts for a bit before they go into the lovers part. I don’t feel like that happened here. I feel like the author really wanted to feature pining in the story, which enemies to lovers is a little allergic to? I’m not saying it can’t happen, but it’s a very different type of pining.

Semantic Error has what I was expecting here: I wanted them to drive each other mad. It’s a YA, so I wasn’t expecting an honest-to-god fight to the death like in fantasy stories, only that they’d go out of their way to annoy each other. This didn’t really happen here, and the change from one extreme to the other was way too quick - like... before the first third of the book. To be fair, it changed not for love but to lust.

I understand this is a me thing - I can’t really find lust enticing unless I’m invested in the relationship. And yes, I mean this in real life: lust by itself is boring, love by itself is probably unrequited, I guess.

Did I enjoy the romance scenes and the little pining? Yes. And I did enjoy both the main character and the love interest, especially the approach that was given to the MC’s struggles with depression and anxiety, which is present throughout the book but never felt like it was dumbed down or even simplified for the sake of plot or so everyone can at least understand what’s happening. This happens a lot with mental health representation, for example: 13 Reasons Why is a book praised by its portrayal of mental health, when I believe the book should be read solely as a mystery, but spinning it as a mental heath story was an incredible idea by some marketing team, since it worked wonders.

The writing is fun, the bickering and dialogue is plenty and I was never bored when reading this book, it’s incredible just how much character this book can fit into itself even with a plot to follow, though it’s also a very simple, loose plot, which is why the ending is very open ended in regards to the main conflict between the MC and the love interest.

Even with the things I complained about, I enjoyed this book. I hadn’t read romance that I enjoyed for a while - I mean, I did enjoy These Violent Delights but the couple I’m most invested in that series is secondary, so it doesn’t count; I want Our Violent Ends in my hands so bad, you can’t even imagine.

So read this! It’s good and it made me warm and fuzzy inside.