Another very late review, but it’s up nonetheless. You Between The Lines is from debut author Katie Naymon and I was drawn to read it because I was drawn to the fact that the main character seems to be a bit of a fish out of water when it comes to her MFA program—which is truly how I felt doing my English Literature major in university. Everyone felt so highbrow and intellectual, whereas I liked to watch reality TV, read YA and not look too deeply between the lines of the books I was reading. I was hoping to see myself in Leigh and see a classic enemies-to-lovers trope with an academic twist.

A former sorority girl starts a prestigious poetry MFA program only to discover that one of her fellow grad students is her high school crush-turned-nemesis, ​who can’t stop writing about her.

No one’s more surprised than Leigh when a prestigious MFA program in North Carolina accepts her. A former sorority girl, Leigh’s the first to admit she knows more about the lyrics of Taylor Swift than T.S. Eliot, and she’s never been able to shake the “all-style-no-substance” feedback her high school crush made in their poetry workshop. Bad enough that her tattooed, New Yorker tote bag-carrying classmates have read all the right authors and been published in the country’s leading literary journals, Leigh’s insecurities become all too real when Will, that same high school crush-turned-nemesis, shows up at orientation as a first-year in the program, too. And now, he’s William, exactly the kind of writer Leigh hates, complete with his pretentious sweater vests and tattered Moleskine.

Leigh’s determined to prove herself—and William—wrong by landing the program’s highly coveted fellowship. But Will’s dead-set on it, too, and in a small cohort, they can’t keep apart for long. When Will submits an intimate poem (that’s maybe, probably, definitely about Leigh) to workshop, they’re both forced to realize there’s more to the other than what’s on the page. And what’s between the lines may be even more interesting.

This book was all right. I liked it more than I think a lot of people (based on what I see on Goodreads), but there were parts of this that I related to—and I really liked Will, the male MC, which kept me in it a bit more.

What didn’t work for me

Leigh: This woman is brutal. She is always the victim (despite being in therapy), she thinks terrible things about the people around her, and she’s almost 30 years old and can’t seem to grasp the fact that her parents are getting a divorce. She claims to have loved William since high school (basically), but she constantly criticizes his work unfairly and calls him a “straight white male”…and yet is obsessed with him? I didn’t see much growth from her other than curbing some of her people-pleasing antics, but even then, I felt like it was only because she figured out it would benefit her in the long run. Her personality made it hard to like this book, even though I like a lot of everything else that was going on. There was also a lot of drinking, which, I understand because a lot of people drink in university, but…it was just drunken party after drunken party.

What I liked

The male main character: Though almost too academic for my taste, William is a great guy who does swoon-worthy things (subtly) and who is exactly the type of person you’d expect getting an MFA in poetry. I wish we got his POV throughout the book because I’m unsure what he liked about Leigh…

The school part: This might be a bit weird, but though I’m not a poetry girl (and honestly had a hard time even getting a lot of the poetry because of the way it was formatted on my Kindle), I really appreciated the situation Leigh was in at school. I was an English major and often felt like my interests were too lowbrow to be on par with my peers, and I like that we explored that a little bit here. I know what it feels like to feel like the “dumb” person in the room because your work isn’t “deep” or filled with hidden meanings and I like that Leigh’s art was still appreciated despite that.

3 STARS

“You have always been the brightest thing in the room and I have never not wanted to be in your spotlight.” —Katie Naymon, You Between The Lines

Thank you to NetGalley and Forever (Grand Central Publishing) for an advanced book copy in exchange for my honest review.