GableGirl's Book Blog - This Time It's Real by Ann Liang

Book Review: This Time It's Real by Ann Liang

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ out of 5 stars

This Time It's Real is such a beautiful young adult rom com and it's just pure perfection and the book I've always wanted. It follows seventeen-year-old Eliza Lin, movie star Caz Song (also 17), and their fake relationship.*

It's such a a beautiful book and I love absolutely everything about it, so I'd definitely recommend it 😂 

Here are some quotes for you, which you can also find in my bio:

"The neglected ones, the unlucky ones, the ones who want more than they've been given. The ones who have to scrape their way up from the very bottom and game a system designed for them to lose. Always first to be punished and blamed when things go wrong. Always last to be seen, to be saved."

"And this, I think, is my ultimate fatal flaw. Missing people who don't miss me back. Clinging onto strands of string that shouldn't mean half as much as they do. It takes so little for me to love someone, yet so long for me to move on."

"I guess my point is that I do believe in love. Really. I'm just not convinced that kind of love could ever happen to me." 

"Romantic breakups are romanticized constantly, talked about everywhere by everyone, but platonic breakups are swept to the side, suffered in secret, as if they’re somehow less important."

"Maybe you can talk about how... I don’t know, how his laughter sounds. If it’s rougher in the mornings, or lower on the phone, or how he always tips his head back when he finds something funny. How – how you can only see his dimples when he smiles at something real. How you’re jealous of everyone who loves him, who knew him before you did."

"When you care about someone, you want to be inconvenienced – you wouldn’t mind being inconvenienced by them every day for the rest of your life. That’s what love is. That’s all love really is."

"But aren’t small things exactly what friendships are made up of? Frayed string bracelets and late-night texts and compilations of your favorite songs? When you take those things away, what do you have left?"

Let me know what you think of this review in the comments and I hope you will try it! Have a nice day!

xoxo, Ells

*Fake relationships, or fake dating, is a popular trope** in the YA romance genre

**he-falls-first-and-harder, enemies-to-lovers, best friends to lovers, etc.