Brace yourself for a boatload of cuteness. Ann Liang has gifted us a dang good time in the form of her YA novel, This Time It’s Real [Buy Bookshop Amazon].

Our protagonist in this novel is Eliza. She’s moved around a lot over her short life due to her mom’s job and that’s caused her to just build up walls to avoid getting hurt. She’s now living in China and doesn’t really have anything to write about for a class assignment, so she makes up a boyfriend and their cute relationship for the sake of an A.

But then… that essay goes viral and she gets an internship offer for it. The problem is, they want her to continue writing about the boyfriend who doesn’t actually exist.

Enter her classmate Caz Song. He’s an actor on popular C-dramas and Eliza happens to overhear that his college essay writing could use some improvement. Eliza corners him and offers to trade writing help for a fake relationship. No strings attached since she just leaves all the time and he’s famous.

This Time It’s Real is so freaking fun. It’s fast paced and I breezed through it at an unusually quick pace. The scene where Eliza pitches the fake dating idea to Caz is hilarious in its weirdness and I am here for it. Caz is just darling, even though he has his own issues too. I mean, he’s a teenage boy, so his issues are relatively tame, but still. He’s got some work to do on herself.

I also love the people that surround Eliza. She has a sweet relationship with her sister, which as a big sister myself, I totally get. The dynamic with her mom is not the one you see in many YA novels. There’s also a whole side story going on with her best friend back in the USA that is so relatable for anyone who has ever moved away. It really ads to the emotions of why Eliza thinks the way she does.

Side note: I want to know what’s on their BFF playlist.

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