you between the lines – GoodeyReads

Rating: ★★★
Audience: Contemporary Romance
Length: 368 pages
Author: Katie Naymon
Publisher: Forever
Release Date: February 18th, 2025
Image & Other Reviews on: Goodreads

BOOK SUMMARY:

A former sorority girl starts a prestigious poetry MFA program only to discover that one of her fellow grad students is her high school crush-turned-nemesis—who can’t stop writing about her.

No one’s more surprised than Leigh when a prestigious MFA program in North Carolina accepts her. A former sorority girl, Leigh’s the first to admit she knows more about the lyrics of Taylor Swift than T.S. Eliot, and she’s never been able to shake the “all-style-no-substance” feedback her high school crush made in their poetry workshop. Bad enough that her tattooed, New Yorker tote bag-carrying classmates have read all the right authors and been published in the country’s leading literary journals, Leigh’s insecurities become all too real when Will, that same high school crush-turned-nemesis, shows up at orientation as a first-year in the program, too. And now, he’s William, exactly the kind of writer Leigh hates, complete with his pretentious sweater vests and tattered Moleskine.

Leigh’s determined to prove herself—and William—wrong by landing the program’s highly-coveted fellowship. But Will’s dead-set on it, too, and in a small cohort, they can’t keep apart for long. When Will submits an intimate poem (that’s maybe, probably, definitely about Leigh) to workshop, they’re both forced to realize there’s more to the other than what’s on the page. And what’s between the lines may be even more interesting.

Thank you to Forever Publishing for the gifted ARC.

I TRIED Y’ALL.

This was high on my release list radar and I was so excited to have received an ARC, and now I’m sad that this didn’t all pan out. There are some good moments between Leigh and Will and different scenes and pieces were perfectly fine. I’ll even go on record that I would try another book by this author, even with my issues with this debut.

Leigh had no character growth. It didn’t show up until the last 30 pages and by that point I had already hit a level of frustration with waiting for her confidence to show and to learn to communicate. I also feel like I handled my parent’s divorce at age 11 better than she did at 27.

And it just didn’t feel romantic. I wanted the swoon factor and never felt that. Many of the moments of closeness between Will and Leigh were fueled with alcohol and that’s not my favorite vibe.

There were a few small plot points that were throw in, forgot about for long stretches of time and then added back in at the end. I think figuring out the continuity more would have helped too.

Overall audience notes: