Amy Noelle Parks

A debut YA rom-com about smart girls, love-struck boys, and quantum theory Seventeen-year-old Evie Beckham has always been too occupied with her love of math and frequent battles with anxiety to want to date. Besides, she's always found the idea of kissing to be kind of weird. But by senior year, thanks to therapy and her friends, she's feeling braver than before. Maybe even brave enough to enter the national math and physics competition or flirt back with the new boy. Meanwhile, Evie's best friend, Caleb Covic, has always been a little in love with her. So he's horrified when he is forced to witness Evie's meet-cute with the new guy. Desperate, Caleb uses an online forum to capture Evie's interest--and it goes a little too well. Now Evie wonders how she went from avoiding romance to having to choose between two--or is it three?--boys.

The Quantum Weirdness of the Almost-Kiss

Riya

sydney

this book was really cute but anytime they talked about math it was so far over my head. also the title has almost kiss in the title but there weren’t actually a lot of them in the book. almost all of them happened before the book started which worked but i feel as though there could have been more throughout which could have furthered evies confusion

Alice

This is a very cute friends-to-lovers YA contemporary that I read in two days.

The writing made the story so easy to slide through and the characters were sweet and relatable.

There are heavy maths and physics (personally, yuck xD) but also a lovely romance, feminist vibes, and a lot of mental health discussion. 

I felt like putting together an aesthetic for it, but the cover is all the aesthetic you need.

Allie Garza

I received an audiobook arc from Netgalley in return for an honest review.
First of all this book was cute and adorable and I think it will a lot of people will relate to the characters. 
The audiobook was excellent, loved the duel narrations! 
Nick Mondelli and Elizabeth Cottle are excellent!

Sarah Vorobets

The CUTEST!!! Such an innocent romance! Sooo cute!! 💕

Emily

~ Thank you to Edelweiss and Amulet Books for providing me with an early copy in exchange for honest review! ~

'Sometimes it's really hard to know what you want.'

This book did a lot of things right for me. Evie lives with anxiety (and has very similar views on it as I do) and also possesses a deep love for mathematics, so we have a lot in common. What I don't quite have in common with her, but I wish I did (sigh...), is her best friend Caleb.

Caleb is one of the best male characters I've read in a romance to date (ha!). He's very rational, and truly understands Evie on such a deep level it's impossible not to appreciate him. He also has such a solid understanding of what it's like for Evie to live with her anxiety and knows exactly what she needs and when she needs it. He has no qualms in learning how to help, but also makes it known that he's not doing this to 'fix' her. 

First, I want to kill Leo for making her feel, even for a second, like something is wrong with her.

He also respects and understands Evie's tumultuous relationship with her mother. He doesn't judge her and even has the balls to cut in when necessary.

'Stop thinking of her as broken. Because she's not.'

It's so important for readers experiencing the same things as Evie to see that being treated the way Caleb treats Evie is what they deserve— that you don't have to settle for anything less. I also resonate so completely with how Evie feels about her anxiety.

I wonder how much of my anxiety has been produced by turning it into a Disorder instead of just seeing it as one of my traits.

Evie has the same relationship with therapy that I do— going when things get really bad, but recognizing when it's time to take a break. That sometimes therapy makes you fixate on the anxiety and then gives you more anxiety about your own anxiety when you should really just stop thinking about it.

Another thing I really commend this book for is how it handles bad familial relationships. I hate when books excuse abusive family members just because they are family. Being family does not mean you get a free pass. Evie's mom DRUGGING her tea because she doesn't trust her own daughter to handle her own anxiety crosses a line, but many books still excuse this behavior with the notion that it's family— that the parent must always be forgiven, and if not, it's the child who's cruel. This book flips that idea right on its head and that's why this next line blew me away.

'You know I love you, Evie,' she says.

'That's not an excuse.'

I have so much respect for Evie (and the author) for saying this. It's so important for people to know that they aren't obligated to love their families. It probably sounds crass, but that's because of how conditioned we are to believe the opposite. I appreciate the fact that this book helps combat that toxic mindset.

Of course, another thing I loved about Evie was her love for math. As someone who loves reading and also loves math, it's sometimes sad to see most book characters proclaiming their hatred for the subject and that the love of one is mutually exclusive of the other. This book however, relentlessly embraces the magic that is mathematics and its connections to nature and beauty, and I loved every second of it.

I wanted to write a book about a character who sees mathematics as beautiful and creative and bound up in our natural world. 

Because I know that much is true.

The author writes this in the Author's Note and it truly encapsulates the reason I, and so many people, love math. It's something too many don't realize or appreciate— that math is discovered and observed, not invented, and that it can be creative and beautiful.

Naturally, Evie's love of math does come with frustrating discrimination from male colleagues. I'm always nervous about how this will be portrayed (sometimes the way that female characters react to it is counterproductive and gets on my nerves— e.g. how I felt about Kallia in Where Dreams Descend), but the way it's approached in this book is perfect. Evie identifies when people see her for her gender rather than her intelligence (and act like the two would have any correlation), but instead of projecting this into negative emotion, she doesn't let it affect her. She keeps a steady head, displays her intellectual prowess, and destroys any preconceived doubts, hopefully contributing to breaking the prejudicial cycle in at least one person at a time.

While Evie is completely confident in the world of numbers, the world of feelings is a bit more foreign to her. That's really what the main conflict of this book boils down to: Are her feelings romantic or platonic? Are they both? Is having both a problem?

At first, this conversation really bothered me because Evie completely separates these feelings in her head— she can't like Caleb romantically because she already loves him platonically. But, as the story went on, I realized that this is all part of her individual growth, and I ended up really enjoying the dialogue around this issue.

One potential criticism I can see with this book is that it really is mostly about the before of the relationship and less of the during/after. Personally, that's what I like reading about— I like the tension and angst and uncertainty leading up to two characters getting together and tend to care much less about the actual relationship once it forms (not really sure why... I just find the build up more fun I guess). But, I could totally see readers really looking for a romance be disappointed by the lack of the actual endgame romance in this book.

The Quantum Weirdness of the Almost-Kiss is both adorable and hard-hitting in ways that specifically resonate with me and so much of my personal life. I'll definitely be keeping tabs on Amy Noelle Parks and am excited to see what she does next (secretly hoping I get more YA math content!).

Belle Ellrich

*I WAS PROVIDED A PHYSICAL GALLEY FOR THE PURPOSE OF A TOUR. THIS DOES NOT AFFECT MY OPINION*

I was really hoping to like this book, but it let me down in more ways than one.

The book started off okay, until I realized that Caleb--one of the main characters in this book--was essentially an obsessive and creepy guy. It was revealed to us that Evie had rejected him in the past and told him she didn't see him that way, but instead of backing off like a decent human being, he continued pining after her. I mean, he internally tracked each of their "almost-kisses" by their dates. They really weren't even almost-kisses, they were mostly just times he felt like kissing her.

Along with that, this book is supposed to have anxiety representation? And yet, the author included a really bad comment from Evie's friend Bex about Evie needing to "talk the crazy out". Way to make us with anxiety feel loved.

Overall, after a few chapters into reading this book, I DNFed it. Based on this experience, I won't be reading future books from this author.

Leonie

[I received a free copy in exchange for an honest review]


Well, this was a disappointment.

My expectations weren’t overly high to begin with because I usually don’t love YA contemporaries, but I was looking forward to reading a cute and fun romance.

First things first I couldn’t connect to the characters. Evie was that cliché awkward nerdy girl. On one hand I really related to her shyness and awkwardness, but on the other hand she was also unlikable and snobbish, which made me dislike her pretty early on in the book.
Caleb was that cliché where the guy dates every available girl in his vicinity, even though he’s apparently smitten with Evie, who of course doesn’t date at all. That’s one of my least favourite romance tropes.

I also want to state that I’m not opposed to “science talk“ in books at all, as long as it’s reasonable and necessary. In this book, it was way over the top for me.

Another pet peeve of mine were the topics of religion and ethics. They’re important issues that shouldn’t just be mentioned for the fun of it.

One thing that I actually liked was that Evie didn’t immediately forgive her mother for her huge break of trust at the end of the novel.

Overall I’d say the book had a lot of potential, but failed to deliver.

Ashton Reed

This book is adorable, guys. It is so sweet and heartwarming!

Goodreads summary:

Seventeen-year-old Evie Beckham has never been interested in dating. She's been fully occupied by her love of mathematics and her frequent battles with anxiety (and besides, she's always found the idea of kissing to be a little bit icky). But with the help of her best friend and her therapist, Evie's feeling braver. Maybe even brave enough to enter a prestigious physics competition and to say yes to the new boy who's been flirting with her.

Caleb Covic knows Evie isn't ready for romance but assumes that when she is, she will choose him. So Caleb is horrified when he is forced to witness Evie's meet cute with a floppy-haired, mathematically gifted transfer student. Because Caleb knows the girl never falls for the funny best friend when there's a mysterious stranger around, he decides to use an online forum to capture Evie's interest. Now, he's got Evie wondering if it's possible to fall in love with a boy she's never met.

As I said before, this book is kinda the sweetest. The pace is pretty slow and the writing style is simple, so it was hard to get into at first. However, I became attached to the characters and their various internal conflicts: Evie with her fight with anxiety and social difficulty and Caleb with his utter love for Evie but his fear that he’ll lose her. Both main characters have complex lives and interactions with others and it is really interesting to see. And if you like the friends-to-lovers trope, this book is for you! It is so so precious to watch Caleb and Evie as they grow into their feelings and constantly gravitate towards each other without even realizing it (well, Caleb totally knows it, but Evie takes a little longer 😉). I know the hype around enemies-to-lovers is insane, but Amy Noelle Parks nails the tension that friends-to-lovers can have as well! 

Alongside the romance, there are great coming-of-age arcs as well! As I mentioned before, Evie deals with intense anxiety and panic attacks, and as the novel progresses, she learns how she handles her anxiety and expresses a profound understanding of herself that allows her to grow and mature into a woman who conquers and thrives amidst her anxiety. Her arc in particular is so inspiring, and I really loved seeing the world from her unique perspective!! 

Overall, this is such an enjoyable and sweet read, and I totally recommend it if you want an easy and heartwarming read to light up your day!

Oh, and fun fact - a math-related pick-up line in this book helped me on my Calculus midterm. Not joking 😂… This book is incredibly math-oriented, but you don’t really have to understand all the mathy references to deeply understand the story, I promise :))

*I received a free physical arc from the publisher in exchange for an honest review, all opinions are my own!*




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Kristina Fitzgerald

Helen Scanlon

A debut YA rom-com about smart girls, love-struck boys, and quantum theory Seventeen-year-old Evie Beckham has always been too occupied with her love of math and frequent battles with anxiety to want to date. Besides, she’s always found the idea of kissing to be kind of weird. But by senior year, thanks to therapy and her friends, she’s feeling braver than before. Maybe even brave enough to enter the national math and physics competition or flirt back with the new boy. Meanwhile, Evie’s best friend, Caleb Covic, has always been a little in love with her. So he’s horrified when he is forced to witness Evie’s meet-cute with the new guy. Desperate, Caleb uses an online forum to capture Evie’s interest—and it goes a little too well. Now Evie wonders how she went from avoiding romance to having to choose between two—or is it three?—boys.

The Quantum Weirdness of the Almost-Kiss

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