I Hate Everyone But You<\/i> is an epistolary novel that takes the form of emails and text messages between two best friends, Ava and Gen. It’s their first semester of college and they’re across the country from one another: Ava’s in film school at USC (they grew up in LA); Gen’s studying journalism at Emerson. We see the bits of their lives that they share with one another, which is to say the fun\/funny\/stressful bits, the parts about hook-ups and relationships and social lives. From the start of the book it’s clear that Ava is the more cautious one of the pair (“Experiment with things so I don’t have to,” she jokes, in her first email to Gen); she’s been dealing with anxiety and other mental health issues for much of her life. Gen’s bolder and more easygoing, and being far from home for college suits her fine, since her family isn’t the easiest to handle (her alcoholic dad and his vow to get sober becomes a plot point). <\/p>\n
This book was a quick and fun read, though there are some maddening moments, characterwise and otherwise. I liked the humor of Ava and Gen’s banter, but also the way they really are there for each other, despite some tensions. I didn’t like the fact that the authors referenced their own YouTube channel in the text of the book: being self-referential can be funny\/cute, but this wasn’t. I also found Ava’s difficulty handling Gen’s coming out as queer to be pretty frustrating, though maybe realistic, I don’t know: Gen tells Ava she’s hooking up with women; Ava refers to Gen as gay even after Gen says she’s not; Ava also says things like “You like guys again?” even though Gen’s never stopped<\/i> liking guys. <\/p>\n
Overall, though, I liked reading about Ava and Gen’s college explorations—Ava joining a sorority and then wondering whether she should quit; Gen having various fun hookups and some associated drama; Ava having some guy trouble of her own. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I Hate Everyone But You is an epistolary novel that takes the form of emails and text messages between two best friends, Ava and Gen. It’s their first semester of college and they’re across the country from one another: Ava’s in film school at USC (they grew up in LA); Gen’s studying journalism at Emerson. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9570","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-young-adultchildrens"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9570","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9570"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9570\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9570"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9570"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9570"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}