You Between the Lines
I finished this two weeks ago and I can’t stop thinking about it.
Leigh just got into an MFA program for poetry. She’s sick of her copywriting job where her ideas are shot down and belittled. She’s underappreciated and ready to do something with all her pent-up creativity she’s pushed away since undergrad. Her world is also rapidly turning upside down as her parents’ marriage disintegrates. She’s making big changes for the better, but one person could throw a wrench in it all—Will Langford, her old crush, also the boy who belittled and shot down her poetry back in high school. And here he is, enrolled in the same MFA program.
This took me back to my college English major days. Yes, these characters are in an MFA program, but it still put me right back into those classrooms full of writing, creativity, awkwardness, and exposure. Leigh is one of the most relatable characters I’ve ever read. The way she adjusts herself to please the people around her, the way she holds back her comments in class (and/or isn’t sure she has anything meaningful to say) was me as an undergrad.
I remember a tiny literature class with only 5 students where I hardly ever spoke up, intimidated by all my classmates. They always seemed to have something smart and insightful to contribute. It turns out that on class evaluation day when our professor stepped out for us to take surveys, all the students I was intimidated by felt the same way about me. How warped our perspectives of ourselves can be sometimes. Enough of my life story. Back to Leigh and Will…
I deeply connected with their insecurities, their desire to be seen and known, and their feelings of being misunderstood. Were there times that this book was painful? Absolutely. Their miscommunication and conflict was hard to witness. I wanted to shake them. But I wanted to shake them because I am them. I needed some of the lessons Leigh learns from her therapist. Something along the lines of “I was late to our session and you assumed it had something to do with me not liking you, is that right?” happens. My reaction to that? Call the authorities; I’ve been shot. How often have I run, not walked, to these same conclusions?
Other highlights were:
📝 the poetry
📝 the camaraderie in the MFA cohort
📝 some fall vibes and corn maze shenanigans
📝 Leigh’s tell-it-like-it-is best friend
📝 Will drives a manual transmission car and it made me miss having one
📝 the way Will and Leigh find their way to self-acceptance
Overall, this was a lovely debut. Did I cringe at times and feel like the sheer volume of misunderstanding was a lot at times? I did, but it’s only because it felt so real and relatable. I can’t fault it for that!
A few favorite quotes:
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🌶️ This book contains multiple open-door on-page romance scenes. For skimmers/skippers, these are in chapters: 15, 20, 22, and 30.
