I enjoy Ben Philippe’s storytelling (I enjoyed his first book, The Field Guide to the North American Teenager) and thought these characters were terrific. Before long, “Cori” is actually pleasant to be around, and she and Halti start to lean on each other more and more, and share their personal challenges and fears. It was genuinely a struggle for me to get through this book and it took me over a week to read it, when normally a contemporary like this would take me 2-3 days. But I would have wanted to learn more about Henri's culture and how his Haitian culture and American culture intertwine.

Honestly, Henri wasn’t likable at all and I think if there were switches between their POVs that may have made the book a little better. When Corinne discovers Henri's dog walking "company" is really just him pretending to be a large entity, she sees the opportunity to use this to her advantage to make Henri help her be better with people. I love cute romantic books because not only do they make me feel all warm and gooey inside, they also make me regret being a single gay bitch with no friends.This book also does a great job exploring whether a specific path is chosen for prestige or for genuine reasons. I found that I could relate to this book because I've started to list out universities for my potential Masters/ PhD (pls, someone let me do a PhD as an MBA graduate). She was compassionate, intelligent, considerate, determined, and a little intense at times, but always has good intentions at heart. It’s a book that will make you laugh, will speak to a piece of your fears, and remind you of your own mistakes. It’s no longer tenable to imagine that the anxieties of a white heterosexual young man expelled from an expensive prep school capture the spirit of our era.

Also, she’s actually a good conversationalist once she became less uptight, as her immediate connection with Ming and Marvyn have shown us. Our main character Henri is certainly a charming one; he smiles a lot, he’s a high-achiever and overall well-rounded students, he has a busy social life, and he loves dogs. I adored Henry, even if he's far from perfect and makes plenty of mistakes, and I also loved Corinne. I loved the characters of Henry and Corrinne's parents, their friends, and even the teachers at school.The guy's running around all day—charming people, making it by with dog walking, running to his next engagement, and having a constant dialogue with himself in his head—and it's a lot. But then Corinne Troy, his neighbour and classmate, blackmails him when she finds out his dog walking job isn't very legit. I look at Corinne afterward, and everything about the moment feels like a postcard: the lint caught in her pink hat, the flush of her cheeks, the way she's scanning my face and biting the inside of her cheek as if there are a million things in her head that she's trying to hold back right now. Anyone who is going through or has ever experienced the college admissions process will be able to relate to Henri's struggle.