Premise
Johanna Palmer is very much over relationships. After a scarring experience her freshman year of college, she’s decided she would much rather have something fun than something serious.
Her best friend Miller has seen it all—the tears, the parties, the drunken phone calls at four in the morning when she needed a ride. In fact, there might be several things Miller saw that Jo herself can’t remember. Things Miller can’t forget.
With the whirlwind of senior year underway, Jo just wants to move on, get her degree, and land her dream job. But her past might not be as easy to outrun as she’d hoped.
My review – spoiler-free
The Anti-Relationship year is such a delight to read. First and foremost the book reads like a train. When picking it up, you’ll fly through it in no time. The fact that this book is right around 300 pages also helps with the flying through it. Nevertheless it never feels like the story is too rushed or like you’re missing pieces from the story.
Another delight about this book are the tropes that are used in here: dual timeline, friends to lovers and a few other ones that might be a bit spoilery to mention here. Especially the friends to lovers trope is not very popular at the moment (I mean *everything* is enemies to lovers these days) so it was such a nice refresher to read a book with this trope because this trope brings so much yearning and honestly how can you not love yearning in a romance book?!
The dual timeline is also just done so very well! There’s some nice foreshadowing done in both of the timelines for things that have yet to come in the other timeline. You can also clearly see character development between the two timelines. Since the two timelines are freshmen year and senior year of college (for my fellow non-US readers: the first and last year of your Bachelor’s degree) there had to be some differences between the way the characters behave because let’s be honest there is quite a big difference between an 18 year old and a 21/22 year old. And that was very clear in this book. The dual timeline is honestly just done so immaculately well.
Lastly, but definitely not least, the characters in this book. You really can’t not love them! Miller is the type of guy every single girl (or guy) deserves. All of the characters in this book feel so real, like you’re reading someone’s diary. When reading the book you can really feel all of their emotions.
On top of all that, this is just a great book for both experienced NA/romance readers, because it doesn’t use the most used tropes, but it’s also a perfect read for people trying to dip their toes in the NA/romance genre because it’s not super heavy on the smut and because it’s a book you’ll fly through in no time. It’s basically just a must-read for everyone!
I was gifted an e-arc of this book by the author but that doesn’t influence my opinion or anything said in this review.
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