I’m a fan of Timothy Janovsky. I’ve read all the Boy Meets Boy books and I’ve read 3 of his other books. Unfortunately this one is my least favorite so far.
Overall this is an entertaining and cute romance with mostly likable characters. I say mostly because in my opinion there are two characters that never really get their redemption in my eyes. I’ll save that spoiler for the end though and I’ll be sure to mark it as such.
The whole focus of this movie is on Nolan and how he was focusing too much on his aspirations and let his familial relationships fall to the wayside. Normally I would be all for Nolan making amends and pulling a Scrooge and changing his ways in hopes of changing the future, but he’s not fully in the wrong. His family didn’t support his dream (this isn’t the spoiler) and yes he was at fault for the way he was acting, but their constant belittling of his dream just angered me.
Nolan loves comedy and wants to be a stand-up comic but his sister and mother are always asking him when he’s going to give up on it and get a real job. Sure his mother is coming from a place of love but we have to normalize the fact that even if a parent does something with good intentions, it can still hurt and needs to be answered for. His sister is just mean to him and her belittling of his dreams comes from less of a place of love and from more of an “I’m right, you’re wrong” kind of place.
So making this book all about Nolans journey without acknowledging that his mother and sister have any fault was a huge miss and lost this book so many points in my eyes.
The romance aspect was one I rooted for but that’s Janovsky’s strength. I always root for his couples. You’re A Mean One, Matthew Prince is a book I read every Christmas and Once Upon You And Me was a great book for someone who may want to read a gay romance with slightly older characters. So the heart of this book, like all of his others, in in the right place and he writes a romance that you can root for.
So though I still liked this I can’t ignore the fact that it’s my least favorite Janovsky book and the lack of redemption for his mother and sister is still a sore point for me. So I’d have to give New Adult a:
6.5 out of 11
Here comes the spoiler.
So here’s the spoiler. When Nolan goes back in time his whole goal is to right his wrongs. That’s great. I suppport that. But I don’t think Nolan was completely wrong. Yes he should have told Drew what he was doing and maybe at least approached his family about it. But he had been waiting for this huge opportunity for five years and it finally came up? Also you expected Nolan to make another decisionw with his sister repeatedly belittling his dreams? And none of them ever EVER apologizet to him for it. They owed him as much of an apology as he owned them. You don’t just shit on your loved ones dreams. The only person who Nolan fully wronged was Drew.