I’m glad I read this before reading reviews, but I still expected I would hate Charlie based on the synopsis. On the contrary, I found myself feeling very sympathetic to Charlie—she’s wrong to think the way she does about “100% lesbian women” and she wishes she weren’t so insecure, but she is stuck in feelings and not in logic.

Once Jo was introduced, I felt even more empathy for Charlie’s situation. I didn’t even care that Charlie had apparently become a “distant” girlfriend for the last year of her relationship with Jo—because Jo was such a shitty person (who I think we are supposed to like??).

If you’re in a relationship and you feel like your partner has checked out, you check in. You go to therapy. You encourage them to go to therapy. You try to find ways the two of you can work through the apparent jealousy and lack of intimacy. What you DONT fucking do is what Jo did—never say anything, stay with the person you slowly resent until you’re emotionally detached from them, and then engage in a romantic friendship with someone else until you’re in love with that person, and then abruptly leave your partner of 7 years by telling her you have fallen in love with someone else.

Another great (raw) book by Harper Bliss - 4.5