If you follow me on twitter, you know how much I have GUSHED about the upcoming YA romcom Counting Down With You, a fake dating high school romance featuring a Bangladeshi teen main character.
I'd been excited about this book since I'd heard the premise, and I was over the moon when I was approved for an ARC! The ARC of this book was probably the best part of my reading year in 2020, and it made me so excited and feel so many things!
Because I loved it so much, I think everyone should read this book, so I'm finally here with a post about the things I adored about this book and why I think everyone should read it. This is very much overdue, but please forgive me and enjoy this whole post gushing about how wonderful this book is.
1. The Premise
It's a fake dating book! The book community spends 90% of it's waking hours thinking and talking about how much they love fake dating, and for good reason!
This is fake dating with a ticking clock, only as long as her parents are away! It ups the tension and the pining.
The love interest has those "bad boy vibes" that let's be honest we're all suckers for, and he turns out to actually have a heart of gold? Everything i've ever needed.
The complex family dynamics and cultural dynamics we were promised are portrayed beautifully and true to life, and it feels very grounded and personal in a beautiful way.
2. The Relationship Dynamic
Can you believe we get a YA couple who communicates? Who takes their partner's needs and feelings into consideration? A male love interest who tries his best to understand her and even when he can't respects her?
Their relationship is so healthy and well developed! The conflicts don't come from being unable to respect or understand each other but instead stem from outside circumstances they can't control but do their best to adapt to.
It made me so happy how respectful Ace was of Karina when things started getting tough, and how clearly he cared for her and wanted to be with her. It was refreshing and wonderful!
Ace is also just so charming, I really did fall for him, he's great!
3. Anxiety Representation
This is a big one for me. Never before have a found a book that so accurately encapsulated what my experience with anxiety was like, especially when I was in high school.
The feeling of knowing something is wrong but having to hide it from your family, knowing you can't get diagnosed and trying to cope through internet searches and doubting yourself at every step, I remember that feeling.
There's a quote in the book, "I'm destined to ping-pong between coping mechanisms until one lands" that made me feel a bit like my world was caving in, because I know that feeling, I know it exactly.
There's also a specific moment of her friends being more valuable to her in these situations than any adult or authority figure, another feeling I remember well.
This book was able to capture feelings I'd almost forgotten about, it felt so real and so true to what I knew.
4. The Portrayal of Complex Family Dynamics
There's a specific portrayal of family dynamics involving being the eldest daughter of an immigrant household and the specific burdens and feelings that come with the position that I think was explored beautifully in this book.
The sentiment that her parents are not bad people, and they do love her, but that this love is conditional in some ways hits really hard because it's so specific and something so many people around me cannot understand when I try to explain it.
The parts about feeling like you owe a debt to your parents and internally feel like you must meet their expectations is so real and it's explored so well in this book
There's even an exploration of how this pressure can affect sibling relationships, and I saw me and my brother in Karina and her brother, constantly feeling at odds even if you do love each other because of this family dynamic.
Karina is a wonderful main character because she feels like so many people I know, and in many ways she represents part of me and my experiences, and I'm so glad to see her in a story like this.
5. The Pure Serotonin of It All
Honestly this book just makes me so happy. So, so, so happy and excited to see something like it in the world.
It's cliche but there really is something to being seen and understood like this and getting to have a happy ending that feels within grasp for someone like me. If I'd read this in high school i know it would have hit even harder.
I read this book a bit earlier into quarantine and I was so burned out and tired and it made me feel so many things in the best way!
This book is so good.
I haven't said everything I wanted to about this book, this is just the top 5 reasons! The characters were amazing as well, Karina felt so real and tangible, Ace was so charming and genuinely sweet, her Dadu was the most wonderful character and made me miss my own Dada and Dadi, and her best friends were well written, fantastic characters.
I hope I was able to convince someone to pick this book up with this rambling list! If you're interested, the link to preorder is here, and you can add it on goodreads here! Counting Down With You comes out May 4th 2021, I hope you all read it and love it as much as I do!
P.S. Since books and kpop take up so much of my blog feed, I'm going to start adding "kpop songs that match this book" at the end of all my reviews. For this one, I'm feeling Replay by SHINee!
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