![]() I bought this book after reading a Vogue article that said the main love interest was clearly based off of Harry Styles and that it had very well written sex scenes. Either of those individually would have been enough to sell me, and putting them together was almost too much for my little heart to handle. So tell me why instead of feeling like a 13 year old perv, I was crying in the club at 1 in the morning? In terms of the sex, I think Vogue lied a little bit (should that be shocking? I don’t know). Don’t get me wrong, this book is HOT, but it’s because of the flirting and obvious chemistry between the main characters. What are technically sex scenes are pretty tame, I would argue that some New Adult reads like ACOMAF are more graphic, but seriously the TALKING in this book. Yeah, it’s enough for me. And in fairness to Vogue, probably enough to warrant their slightly false advertising. Not that this book could ever be rated PG-13, I think I just expected it to be 50 Shades level TMI, and it wasn’t. But when Hayes rubs her wrist under her watch strap - Jesus Christ. Despite not being the most descriptive romance novel I’ve read in awhile, it is by far the most intimate. Fair warning, this book is ridiculously sad. Hayes and Solene are doomed from the start; you know it, she knows it, he knows it (kind of). But you can’t help but root for them and hope that somehow they can make it work. In any other book I would have hated Solene. The chick is a straight up snob, but she was the perfect character for this story. She needed to be rich, beautiful, and sophisticated to make their dynamic work. And work it did. While I think that this made her perfect for Hayes, I don’t think she was the right character to delve into the commentary about the invisibility of women over a certain age that kept coming up in the last half of the book. One of my favourite moments is when Hayes calls her out on it at an art show. Hayes is very clearly based on a certain former boybander, and not just because of his looks/style. August Moon is a bunch of preppy Brits who don’t do choreography in their shows, record new albums while touring their current one, have hella extra fangirls who are convinced Hayes is in a relationship with a bandmate, Hayes famously dates older women, and at one point in the book the band releases a tour documentary. Hayes even makes a joke about telling his fans that he sends them “all the love,” which is how Harry Styles sometimes signs autographs and the occasional tweet (and yes, the fact that I know that makes me feel like a psychopath). Even though the obvious inspiration is what made me buy the book, I was a little nervous going in. I have a lot of respect for fanfiction and fanfiction writers, I’ve read a not insignificant amount of Drarry and Dramione content in my day but I wouldn’t say that I’m particularly well-versed in that aspect of fandom culture. And I find something about fanfiction based on real people sort of … creepy? I don’t know, there’s just something about the concept that makes me feel like I’m taking liberties that I shouldn’t be or disrespecting someone’s privacy and boundaries. Taking inspiration from a celebrity makes sense to me, writers do that with people in their own lives too. But there’s a difference between being inspired by someone who you admire and fetishizing them. So while I don’t have an issue with fanfiction in general, I think anyone who has read it can probably agree that sometimes it can cross an invisible line. And obviously I’m still a hypocrite because the Harry Styles implications are what made me buy the book. But luckily, it did not cross that razor thin line into being icky. I do think that the author could have changed a few things to make the similarities less blatant, as it occasionally took me out of the story but overall it didn’t feel like a weird wattpad fantasy. Most of the allusions to One Direction just made me laugh, because despite those obvious references, Hayes was a unique enough character that the story felt authentic. Yes, the basic concept of him is Harry Styles to a T, but since neither I nor Robinne Lee (presumably) know what Harry Styles is like in his private life let alone in his relationships, Hayes is very much his own character. If Lee hadn’t crafted a character that stood apart from what we do know about how HS comes across in public, the book would have fallen very flat. Maybe this is how Harry Styles is in her fantasy, but either way Hayes didn’t feel like a stand-in for a certain tattooed wonder, he felt like his own person. His openness and obvious love for Solene is what drove the story - not the idea of him.* While I was looking forward to some good old fashioned smut, The Idea of You pleasantly surprised me with a genuinely fantastic love story instead. *see what I did there?
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