Devon Elizabeth’s Reviews > Beautiful World, Where Are You > Status Update

They went from indifferent to angry to horny in 5 pages

What is it with Sally Rooney and women labeled as “cold”

I just learned so many things abt Felix I did not want to learn

The way Eileen is talking about Simon in this email is so interesting and endearing— I love this new perspective she’s gaining about him! It’s like watching someone have a realization in real time

These emails, while interesting, go on a tad too long and take too many philosophical tangents for me to be engaged with them the whole way through

Rooney always writes interesting, flawed, fucked-up female characters and does so realistically. Glad to see it here in BWWAY <3

I really like the structural choice for Alice and Eileen to email each other in between chapters! However, I don’t understand the point in them discussing moral quandaries at length that don’t have much to do with either moving the plot forward or psychologically examining some thing in their own lives (this happens at times, but not often).

The dialogue is classic Rooney, but not as enjoyable— there’s even less connection between these characters than is typical of a Rooney novel. The only exception is the dialogue between Eileen & Simon, which is constantly engrossing and feels like it should be in a different book tbh.