lydia's Reviews > ASAP

❝ you should be wary of setting rules with me. you know I live to break them. ❞

ಇ ~ I can see you by taylor swift
then we kiss, and you know I won’t ever tell

I’m humbled. I thought I would have the same meh feeling about this as I did the author’s other books, and bought it solely for the cover. but boy, was I wrong. this was just about the cutest thing ever.

the reason that axie’s other books were a miss for me was because of the writing style, and unfortunately, that’s usually not something that varies from book to book; an author’s writing is what can make them well-loved or well-hated, because it has a distinct impression or voice. From my previous experiences with axie’s writing, I knew it to be cheesy and a bit stilted, and frankly incapable of writing chemistry or angst. imagine my surprise when the writing style in this book was not only fun, easy-to-read, and flowed remarkably well, but had a sizzling romance (not in regards to spice, obviously, as it’s YA, but in that the chemistry was immaculate).

sori and nathaniel are both, well, extremely hot characters and their moments actually had me silently squealing and cackling. I say this a lot, because I’m a hopeless romantic and almost anything remotely related to romance will make me pass out, but seriously; it was too good! I felt like I was watching a k-drama. the pool scene?? unwell. I loved how nathaniel didn’t force himself onto sori but waited patiently for her and respected her boundaries. They were such simps for each other and I was eating it up.

I also loved the kpop-based plot. The xoxo band members are all cute (youngmin & hyemi spinoff when??) and it was refreshing to have a protagonist who knew what she was doing and how to handle herself while being scrutinized by the media. speaking of awkward and oblivious characters… what do you know, I liked jenny a lot more when she wasn’t suffering from main character syndrome. She was actually really cute. The platonic & familial relationships in this book warmed my heart– sori had such cute relationships with jenny, hyemi, and her mom. we stan!!

–bottom line: this book really is just as cute as its cover <3

❝ I would walk the same path every lifetime, if I knew that at the end of it, you were waiting for me. ❞

happy reading ily 💗🌷