Carlynn's Reviews > Expiration Dates

NetGalley kindly gave me an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review and well, here it goes... Once again, Rebecca Serle writes a book with a cool concept, but absolutely lacking in execution. This review contains mild spoilers.

• The writing style is so rudimentary. So many unnecessary details about every character's exact outfit and how they smell. It's fluff and genuinely adds nothing to each scene it's in. I'm not kidding, it was every chapter. Explaining every outfit in detail is cheap writing.

• Writing in a major health concern/essentially terminal illness for the main character was a copout and adding it so late into the book was cheap. It then became the entire focus of the book. Focus on your cool concept and stop giving characters illnesses because you think it's going to make your writing "deep". This one in particular just felt like it did not fit in with the rest of the book.

• The character development fell flat. I felt for Daphne and her situation with the notes which kept her from getting attached to love interests, but then the book became about her illness and her victimhood and her what... not wanting a great guy who wants to stick beside her? The scene of Daphne confronting Jake and ending things she basically invalidated his feelings and gaslit him. There was absolutely no character development for Hugo. None. At the end of this book we're supposed to believe Daphne tries again with this guy? The guy who left her after finding out about her illness, who then tricked her with a fake note saying how long she'd be with Jake. THAT'S the guy for her? PLEASE.

Every time Rebecca Serle takes a cool concept and is like "Let me add in a debilitating illness, some descriptions of bad outfits, and some basic, surface-level thoughts about life." Every time. At least when other authors recycle plots, they do it well. And at least this book didn't have a cheating plot line like One Italian Summer did.

Once again, another miss with this author.