Synopsis:
Meet Cute Diary is a rom-com about how a transgender teen’s first love challenges his ideas about perfect relationships.
Noah Ramirez thinks he’s an expert on romance. He has to be for his popular blog, the Meet Cute Diary, a collection of trans happily ever afters. There’s just one problem—all the stories are fake. What started as the fantasies of a trans boy afraid to step out of the closet has grown into a beacon of hope for trans readers across the globe.
When a troll exposes the blog as fiction, Noah’s world unravels. The only way to save the Diary is to convince everyone that the stories are true, but he doesn’t have any proof. Then Drew walks into Noah’s life, and the pieces fall into place: Drew is willing to fake-date Noah to save the Diary. But when Noah’s feelings grow beyond their staged romance, he realizes that dating in real life isn’t quite the same as finding love on the page.
Review:
There are parts of Meet Cute Diary that I loved. Others I absolutely hated. It’s hard to enjoy a book when you find the main character insufferable but I pushed through and managed to finish. Which I’m glad I did. Meet Cute Diary is genuinely enjoyable but the author could have toned down Noah just a little bit.
Noah has to be one of the worst book characters ever. I actually hate him, are you supposed to hate him? If you are, well done to the author, you wrote him perfectly. The constant dragging of his brother’s girlfriend because she’s white got old real quick. This may have been warranted near the end of the book, but before that all he knew about her was that she’s going out with his brother. Noah constantly comments on the colour of people’s skin and only has bad things to say about white people. Now I get white people can suck sometimes but is this really necessary? He even acts that way towards Devin to begin with. Noah only starts to like Devin when he realises Devin isn’t cis.
Noah is extremely catty in general and clearly only cares about himself. Most of Meet Cute Diary is spent listening to Noah’s delusions about how every attractive stranger he meets is secretly in love with him. I was so happy when he finally got put in his place. He’s actually almost likeable by the end of the book.
The idea of the Meet Cute Diary blog is super cute and I did enjoy those little stories, but I don’t think anyone would actually care enough about a blog to either hate or defend it the way they do in this book. Also, I’m still not sure how the fake dating part proved the stories were true. Just because the author of the blog is in a relationship doesn’t mean the other stories aren’t fake. It’s a very weird situation and while I did like Drew to begin with, it’s very obvious he’s a huge red flag quite quickly. Then again, most of the characters are. Other than Devin. I loved Devin.
I really enjoyed the summer camp parts of Meet Cute Diary. The sleepaway weekend was probably my favourite part of this entire book. Shame it didn’t last too long. Most events in this book are skirted over with no details given. I would have liked more development of characters and relationships through these events.
There’s nothing else to say about Meet Cute Diary that isn’t talking about how much I disliked Noah–that would get old real quick. I did find the majority of this book enjoyable so I’m giving it a fair rating of three stars.
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