SO, THIS IS LOVE

Teen lovebirds return for another go ’round after So, This Is Christmas (2021).

Finley Brown and Arthur Chakrabarti Watercress are back from the holidays. Over winter break in Finley’s small Oklahoma hometown of Christmas, the pair started smoochin’ and snugglin’, but now that they’re back at their boarding school in Connecticut, Arthur is giving Finley the cold shoulder. Finley’s confused and annoyed: Are they a couple, or was it all just a holiday fling? In addition to Finley’s romantic woes, she has to navigate her prep school’s snotty rich-kid cliques, an element touched lightly upon in the previous book but brought to the forefront here. Mixing in the boarding school kids with the already large cast of characters risks scuttling the book, but White junior Finley returns to her self-absorbed status quo. The supporting cast is lacking in dimensionality, perhaps because the lead comes across as not being terribly interested in getting to know others as real people. Andreen also returns Indian and White British Arthur to his baseline characterization: smug, erudite, and annoying. The result is an overly anxious protagonist pining over an overly affected goofus. With actively frustrating characters, the narrative never gathers any steam.

The honeymoon’s over.