It’s a Saturday night; homework has been handed in, exams have been studied for, and textbook chapters have been read. I close my laptop: it’s time to apply some probably expired eyeshadow; it’s girls’ night bitches.

Knee-high boots that I will definitely regret in two hours, a ruffled mini short perfect for perreo, a deep-cut halter top that grooves into my neck. Whoever said that you can only either show legs or cleavage clearly didn’t know what they were talking about.

My arms burn from slicking back my hair into a ponytail so that it looks like I got a free facelift. I poke at my eyes with black eyeliner, pluck any eyebrow hair out of place, and pat on setting powder. Pat. Pat. Pat. Pat.

Lips get overlined.

Nose gets contoured.

Blush is too pigmented, but who cares? It’s going to be dark anyway.

Highlighter at the tip of my nose.

Final touches here and there.

I step back, and a Bratz doll version of me blinks back in the mirror.

Damn, I look fucking hot.

Grab my purse and keys and out into the night I go. My friend is already lightly buzzed when I meet her on the train. Vodka Cola mix in a plastic bottle because who pays for €20 watered-down drinks anyway? We laugh way too loud and get judgmental stares. Shush. But who cares? We are nineteen, fabulous and wild.

The night is ours. Time for some young hoes to run free.

Stumbling out of the train and into the tram, more loud giggling, more stares. Wait, this is our stop; quick, get out! Laughter. Finally, we’ve reached our destination. Ta-da, it’s the new trendy club.

But as we look at the girls in the queue, we realise something is off. Long pants, slicked-back buns, natural makeup, satin lace tops. Shit, did we get the address wrong? But we didn’t. This is, in fact, the new trendy club all the uni students are going to, and we are left with questions. To quote Megan Thee Stallion herself:

Where the hoes at? Where the baddies?

And before anyone gets offended, I’m using “hoe” affectionately. My Substack is literally called Being Emotionally Slutty, stop clutching your pearls.

Tailored trousers have replaced sequined mini dresses.

Bodycon dresses have been switched out for satin camisoles.

Instead of six-inch heels, women are wearing ballerinas or kitten heels.

Slick buns, minimal gold jewellery, natural eye makeup.

When did the club become so… tasteful?

Somewhere along the way, “looking hot” became “looking wealthy.”

The ideal has obviously shifted. Back in the 00s and 2010s, we had Ke$ha, Paris Hilton, and Kim Kardashian as known party girls. Victoria’s Secret was at its peak with its bedazzled push-up bra, and people wore wedges and impractical heels, smudged eyeshadow and icy pink lipstick. It was all about being the Sexy Bitch, the hottest girl in the room, about being this unstoppable Maneater that everyone wanted.

Now, fast forward to the present day: it’s all about being classy and elegant. “What I find chic vs unchic” is trending on social media, and everyone is dying to add their two cents about whether overlined lips are elegant.

The current ideal is all about being effortlessly sophisticated.

The girl who looks put together without trying, who has a capsule wardrobe of high-quality fabrics in colours that suit her colour season. She never looks vulgar, and god forbid she has a full-coverage face of makeup on, with eyelashes the size of butterfly wings, and wears a low-cut top and a mini skirt. Scandalous.

The goal isn’t to look sexy anymore.

It’s about looking expensive.

And showing off your body, your breasts, your legs is just so obviously cheap.

The way that I remember it, this shift occurred in spring 2023, with Sofia Richie’s wedding. Now the shift might have been happening slowly beforehand, but her wedding marked the Big Bang, and nothing was the same afterwards.

Remember all of those videos saying, “Oh well, look how trashy she used to look before while dating Scott Disick. And ta-da, look at her now with her husband! Sooo much better! So sophisticated and classy!”

After 2023, everything was about quiet luxury, about whispering wealth instead of shouting it. Hailey Bieber then popularised the clean girl aesthetic, which included minimal glowy makeup and sleek hairstyles.

Gone are the days of bronzed, contoured makeup of 2016. Goodbye to bodycon dresses that show off your butt, and large chunky Balenciaga sneakers.

Yes, I’m talking about the ones that look like socks.

Fashion is signalling.

People don’t just wear clothes because walking around naked in public is deemed socially unacceptable. It’s fashion 101 that people wear clothes to communicate things, whether that’s religion, culture, subculture, social status or jobs. What we wear silently communicates how we want to be perceived.

The party girls with their bedazzled tops and mini skirts scream, “Hey, I’m young, fun, spontaneous, don’t take myself too seriously, and here to be a bit messy, but only for tonight!” Their aesthetic communicates a willingness to be seen.

Whereas the whole classy trend, which has taken over our phone screens and clothing racks, whispers, “I have taste, I belong in expensive places, I have self-control and I’m timeless.”

Those are two different things.

But what is the elegant going-out girl trying to signal? I’m in an unserious place but I’m serious? I belong in expensive places but got drunk off of grocery store wine outside the club? I have money, but I bought this polyester top off of the discount rack at Zara?

And people might say: Well, I like dressing modest and timeless, so stop shaming women; we all have the right to choose.

But what I’m trying to get to the bottom of is why.

Why are you choosing to dress modest and sophisticated as a first-year uni student?

Is it because you’re tired of getting eye-fucked by frat boys? Tired of getting sexualized, gawked at, and grabbed at?

Is this style of dressing a rebellion against the male gaze? Is the key to wear a lace satin top and tailored trousers?

Is that what we are signalling? Escape from the male gaze?

But this begs the question: Have we actually escaped?

Or did we simply change which man we’re trying to attract?

The entire classy, sophisticated trend isn’t just about clothes. It’s about a lifestyle. The aesthetic is built around an imagined life of tennis clubs, linen shirts, summer houses, a soft life, a rich husband, expensive bags.

The fantasy of that aesthetic isn’t just about fabrics. The clothes are a costume for the life they imply.

So when I see a bunch of young women dress in this style, it’s not communicating that they like natural fibres; instead, it communicates an aspiration for that wealthy fantasy that oftentimes gets sold through relationships.

It seems like everyone is trying to appeal to these rich boys. Who these rich boys are, or where they are, I don’t know. Text me when you find out.

Controversial take, but I don’t think we’ve escaped the idea of dressing for male approval. We’ve simply changed what kind of approval we’re seeking and from whom. Yes, this whole aesthetic has an element of aspiration, and about attracting a lifestyle. The country house, the summer in Lake Como, the effortless wealth, the perfectly curated life. But a lot of content frames access to this lifestyle as being easiest through wealthy men who can provide that for you. And the signal we’re trying to whisperly convey is: I belong in your world. Come sweep me off my feet and buy me expensive bags. Take me to your house in Lake Como.

I’m not trying to make a broad claim like “All women dress classy to land rich men”. I’m trying to figure out whether the change in our aesthetics has started reflecting our aspirations.

In an era obsessed with financial freedom, status and wealth, it's perhaps unsurprising that our aesthetics have begun reflecting those aspirations too. The old-money aesthetic isn't just selling linen trousers (although I’m sure linen sales have gone up); it's about selling a lifestyle. One with country houses, generational wealth, and a partner who already belongs in that quiet luxury world.

Why did “slutty” become embarrassing?

Looking “slutty” used to be aspirational.

Bear with me.

As I already mentioned, dressing a certain way in the early 2000s and early 2010s wasn’t embarrassing.

Bandage dresses, sparkly bra straps, sky-high heels, anything bodycon. Those were the beauty ideal.

Now it seems there’s almost a moral undertone if you don’t choose to follow the chic advice on TikTok.

You hear words being thrown around like someone looking cheap, or tacky. Or worst of all:

She has no class.

That is very different from simply saying: I personally prefer linen, but if she wants to wear a leather bandage dress, that’s cool.

There’s a tempting narrative that covering up is automatically feminist, but it’s more complicated than that. Nowadays, there’s almost this implication that one woman is making better life choices because she’s dressed modestly.

In simple words: slut shaming.

But make it subtle.

Side-by-side 30s reels are made about how one woman is dressing for the male gaze (I mean, how dare she wear leggings and a crop top) and how the other is dressing for the “female gaze”. Which includes wool coats, natural fibre tops, and perfectly fitting pants. One is dressing for attention, whereas the other is put together and sophisticated.

Again, in my opinion, the whole “female gaze” is just slut shaming repacked.

It’s the Madonna whore complex all over again.

Because social media is making it seem like there are only two types of women: the slutty party girl that doesn’t have a 7 am morning routine that includes a juice cleanse and journaling, and the clean girl who does all those things and has a classy sense of style.

In other words: the whore and the wife.

One of them is for a night’s fun, and the other is the woman you want on your arm for life.

I’ve personally experienced being looked down on by other women simply because I chose to wear more revealing outfits to the club. As if there’s this moral superiority attached to dressing modestly (which is clearly not what I was doing).

Classy stopped meaning an aesthetic and started meaning a personality trait.

Because now there’s this assumption that if you’re covered up, you’re intelligent and educated, and if you wear a mini skirt, you’re shallow.

Maybe women didn't suddenly stop enjoying mini skirts and slutty outfits. Maybe the social cost of wearing one just became higher.

Final Body Count

To conclude, I’m not saying that everyone needs to wear a skirt the size of a belt. Nor am I saying women who dress elegantly are somehow less fun and are all gold diggers and slut shamers.

I just find it fascinating that somewhere along the way, the aspiration changed. And I tried to answer what the way we dress says about what we aspire to become. Because in the end we stopped wanting to be the hottest girl in the club and started wanting to look like we could own the building.

We didn’t stop performing femininity. We changed the kind of femininity we’re performing.

But I think I mainly wrote this essay to remind my fellow young women that they’re young and beautiful.

You have the rest of your life to dress elegantly, but for now take advantage of the fact that you still produce collagen, have no wrinkles and that your breasts are still perky. Go out, have fun! Be messy! Wear that risky top while you still can! Before you hear the comment, are you sure that’s age-appropriate? Isn’t that a little young for you?

Girl, if your club outfit could double for a networking event… I have questions.

I’m simply asking for one brave woman to put on a sequined mini dress, enough body shimmer to be visible from space, and single-handedly revive the party girl economy.

Do it for the culture.

Come shake ass with me, pretty please.

xx, Alegra

Beauty always felt like a finish line. Once I crossed it, I’d finally get to relax.

So, as a teenager, I trained for it like a sprint.

I swallowed Accutane pills, spent hours styling my curly hair, waited impatiently for my braces to come off, prayed for the day I could finally wear contact lenses, and watched prettier girls collect boyfriends like Pokémon cards while I stood on the sidelines, trying to convince myself that personality mattered more. I felt like Mia Thermopolis in the beginning of The Princess Diaries, and when my glam team would finally arrive, I too would become a hot princess.

When Olivia Rodrigo’s sophomore album GUTS came out in 2023, I listened to the song “pretty isn’t pretty” on repeat because it perfectly summed up the way I was feeling. And I may or may not have shed some tears on the bus on a school trip because I thought that I would never be pretty and that I was a failure.

In my Latino culture, beauty is very important for women. It’s a status symbol and also a way to escape poverty. Whenever I heard my aunts and mother talk about another woman, it always started with “she’s a very beautiful girl” or “the poor thing was never really pretty” before they went on to list her achievements in life. And guess which of the two always ended up being successful and intelligent with a wealthy husband. As a kid, I always remembered my mom telling me that beauty is very important while trying to brush my hair into a tight ponytail, and when I would cry and say it’s unfair, she would say that the world isn’t fair, so you might as well play by the rules and get ahead.

My whole life, I had been plucked, groomed, and taught that beauty was confidence. As the saying goes: Look good, feel good, do good.

I genuinely believed insecurity was a side effect of being ugly.

So imagine my surprise when I eventually experienced a glow-up and discovered that insecurity simply gets better dressed too.

The glow-up wasn’t the lie.

The lie was that pretty girls stop comparing themselves.

All my hours of YouTube research on curly hair routines had paid off, and I started getting compliments left and right about how luscious and gorgeous my hair is. I ditched the glasses and poked at my eyes for over an hour at the optician until I finally managed to insert and remove my contact lenses. The pills worked, my skin cleared, and one day I looked in the mirror and sighed, “Did I finally make it?” Had my sprint for beauty paid off?

No, because the list also had a growth spurt.

I’m going to sound like one of those guys in finance with blue eyes who are 6’5, rambling on about their ETFs, but essentially, beauty standards function like inflation.

When I was fourteen, clearing my acne felt like finally saving enough money to buy a house.

By nineteen, the market had crashed. Suddenly, clear skin wasn’t enough anymore. Now I needed Pilates, an expensive perfume, colour analysis, a lash serum, and a signature style just to feel average.

Because at 14, being pretty was a simple checklist of

• Having clear skin

• Nice hair

• Being skinny

• Having a crop top from H&M and pairing it with leggings

At 19, being pretty meant.

• Having a long, lean torso like a Pilates princess

• Naturally long lashes that could be achieved with a lash serum

• White teeth

• Big lips

• Big butt

• Small classy fashion boobs but not being flat-chested

• High-quality waterproof gold jewellery

• Knowing your colour seasons

• Knowing your body shape and dressing accordingly

• Smelling expensive and having a unique scent,

• Having a good recognisable style

• Looking like you come from a long line of wealthy family members

• Looking natural while secretly maintaining yourself

And now everyone is walking around with the same type of features, or as my finance bro alter ego would say: they’re all just investing in the same stock.

You don’t have to look further than the women in the 90s and 00s who were considered beautiful. Back then, we had different face shapes, forehead sizes, lip sizes, hair textures, and moles. Nowadays, everywhere you look, the “conventionally pretty” girls all share the same features: a small button nose, naturally big lips, large expressive eyes, straight eyebrows, and long, thick hair. Beauty has become homogenised to a point where if you don’t fit into a certain box, you’re not attractive.

Now I don’t want to romanticise 90s and 00s beauty standards either. They were exclusionary in their own ways, often deeply racist, and trends like heroin chic were undeniably harmful. Yet there seemed to be more room within the category of what was considered beautiful, allowing for more variation. Women with full lips and sultry features were celebrated alongside women with thinner lips, stronger noses, wider foreheads and softer faces. Now everyone who doesn’t have lips like Angelina Jolie is getting lip filler, and people with rounder faces are getting the fat sucked out like a leach.

As I mentioned before, I thought only “ugly” people compared themselves, because why would a pretty girl ever feel insecure? Well, it turns out they do.

Because when you become pretty, you still compare yourself to pretty, or what you conceive to be prettier.

You can objectively be considered attractive, but as TikTok has made abundantly clear, there are “different types of beauty”; you can have a more low-key, natural, softer girl-next-door beauty, or a more dramatic, high-contrast, Instagram beauty, or a more ambiguous, sharp-featured model beauty, or this or that, and the list goes on.

You start comparing yourself to a blue-eyed, black-haired girl because you think your hazel eyes are boring. After all, it just blends in with your light brown hair. Your nose is too small to be considered big, but also not small enough to be small. Being skinny isn’t enough anymore because now you have to have a toned stomach and long limbs, and every time you leave the house, you find a girl with thinner legs. This girl is petite, so you feel like an elephant beside her; the other one has straight hair, and you feel like an unkempt mess with your curls; then another has a longer torso, and you feel stumpy.

Suddenly it’s not your boyfriend who has the wandering eye but you.

They wander to random girls at the train station wearing tube tops that show off their defined collarbones, or to the girl at the club whose features don’t get blended out in the flashing lights, and all of a sudden you catch yourself stalking the Instagrams of your man’s exes.

Pretty girls compare too.

Just like everyone else, they compare upwards. Because pretty is never pretty enough.

Beauty isn’t a finish line, nor a moving goalpost. It’s a never-ending treadmill with no chance of turning off.

And the more you run, the more pressure you’re under. Thoughts about whether you need makeup permeate your brain, and you start wondering if you look tired. Or if people will notice you gained weight because you went out to eat two days in a row. Your mood gets tied to how beautiful you perceive yourself to be that day. A bad hair day will slash any productive work you could accomplish, and it doesn’t matter if you looked like a baddie out with your girls last week because today you feel like a slug undeserving of love.

There’s always somethin’ missin’. There’s always somethin’ in the mirror that I think looks wrong. - Olivia Rodrigo

But alas, the glow-up is a myth because something will always not look right. I’m not saying that glow-ups aren’t real; they are. I myself experienced one. I’m just saying that having a glow-up is packaged as if it would solve all your problems and you’d finally feel secure and never compare yourself again. But that’s a lie that I would like to report as false advertising.

I think I realised that the moment the prettiest girl in my class said she looked horrible that day. She had long, thick blonde hair, blue eyes, full lips, cheekbones, tall and skinny, abs without working out, long torso, boobs and a butt, and loaded parents.

I wanted to slap her. Strangle her. Rip out her golden hair. How dare the prettiest girl I knew be insecure?

Because even under the harsh school bathroom lighting, looking into the tiny dirty mirror, she still looked stunning, and she was complaining. The audacity. And that’s where I realised that if she even perceived herself as “horrible looking”, then we might all just take a bath with our toasters.

I didn’t become insecure because I wasn’t pretty. I became insecure because there will always be a bigger fish in the form of a skinny, blue-eyed girl.

My whole life, I was training for a spring when, in reality, it’s an eternal marathon you run on a treadmill.

Insecurity doesn’t disappear when you become prettier; it just also learns how to contour and dress for its body shape.

Because pretty will never be pretty enough.

xx Alegra

Love. Love. Love.

The most common theme of life, and for some, the ultimate goal. But what even is love? How do you know when you’re in it? Or when you’re falling? Everyone talks about it as if they and only they understand the depths of its truth or as if it’s the most baffling, unsolvable, incomprehensible mystery.

And me? I know one thing: I absolutely love asking people uncomfortable, downright inappropriate questions in a quest to feed my ever-hungry curiosity. Some people collect labels or stamps; I collect deeply personal information and become downright insistent on obtaining it. As soon as a friend starts seeing someone, I become insufferable.

Do you like him?

How much?

Or do you love him?

How do you know?

Are you sure?

Like sure sure?

The curiosity beast requires it after all.

Over the years, the answers and stories I’ve heard have been truly baffling, only confusing me and the monster more.

I’ve had people tell me that they dated for months and not once felt love. Meanwhile, I’ve heard girls swear on their lives, cross their hearts, and hope to die that they were in love after two weeks. If you know, you know, right? But what if you don’t know?

So naturally, after hearing all of this, I had a minor existential crisis on their behalf. Because what are we calling love these days? Has the word just become synonymous with a gigantic bucket that we dunk every intense feeling in? Attraction. Obsession. Attachment. Anxiety. Doesn’t matter. Let’s just Kobe it straight into the bucket and high-five everyone after a perfect throw.

Ah, yes, the famous winged insects from the lepidopteran superfamily Papilionoidea, known for the ability to make humans realise that L is for the way you look at me, O is for the only one I see, V is very, very extraordinary, okay, you get the point. Butterflies. The most common vanilla answer to the age-old question. But I couldn’t help but wonder: when did we all collectively decide that insects with pretty privilege are proof of love?

Now everyone experiences butterflies differently. Some friends say they feel it in their gut, whereas I feel it more in my chest. It’s as if my ribcage is curling around my heart, lightly squeezing while a bunch of needles poke at it, but it doesn’t hurt; instead, I feel ticklish.

I’ve felt like that before a physics exam, a minimum wage job interview, an important presentation, and before opening my university acceptance email. Did I love doing any of those things? No. So, unfortunately, those insects are incredibly unspecific.

It may not have been love, but something else entirely. Anxiety. Which is a feeling that is strongest with uncertainty. I didn’t know if I was going to pass my exam, get that job, or get into university, so cue the butterflies.

Now I’m not saying that if you feel butterflies for any other person that it’s a red flag and you should drop them immediately. The problem arises more so if you use butterflies as your only measure or romantic interest.

Let us conduct a little experiment, play a little game of comparison. You have two, guys: Boy X and Boy Y.

X relies consistently, never leaves you on delivered for more than 2h, so you’re not constantly analysing whether he’s interested in you and where you stand. In other words, it’s not very exciting because you know what to expect.

On the other hand, Y replies inconsistently, sometimes quickly and sometimes it takes up to 5 to 6 hours to get a response. But don’t worry, he must’ve just been busy! He goes hot and cold, effectively breadcrumbing you. And suddenly pebbles become mountains, and you’re rereading texts because for the past days he’s been responding quickly, but now he’s taking longer.

Did you do something wrong?

Say something wrong?

Now you’re wondering if he really likes you, and unbeknownst to you, you’ve already fallen for his trap. Because now, once he finally replies, you get this dopamine rush and everything feels alright again, or at least until he starts taking a bit longer to respond again.

Now for our experiment, who would give you more butterflies? X or Y?

For a lot of people, unfortunately, it’s going to be Boy Y (at least in my experience). This is because all this constant worrying is creating emotional uncertainty, which makes the connection feel more intense. Everything feels heightened around him because you don’t know if the next time he’ll actually reply, and suddenly you have a bad case of the butterflies, and you must think you have an insanely deep connection with Boy Y.

Which raises the question: do the winged insects measure love or uncertainty?

And as always, social media has a role in this. It always does, because the internet loves love, but it also loves romanticising. Think about any romance movie, and the female protagonist will claim this feeling and this passionate, deep understanding for the other person. Butterflies are often treated like the gold standard. The zsa zsa zsu.

Love in the media is often portrayed as dramatic, nerve-wracking, and cannot-breathe-without-the-other-person intense. Love has to be entertaining; it’s Hollywood after all.

Who would want to watch a movie about a girl meeting a guy, and he communicates his interest in her clearly, no cat and mouse games, and in the relationship, both parties feel calm and secure? No passionate confessions in the rain after a huge miscommunication, no angry fighting, just calmness. Both people feel valued and appreciated; boundaries are set; neither loses themselves in the relationship; and both maintain their individuality. So boring, right? Horrible TV. Shut it off.

It’s the uncertainty that makes it entertaining. Take The Notebook: Will Noah and Allie be able to be together despite their class difference? Will she find out about the letters he wrote to her? And in Twilight, will Bella’s suicide attempt after a long depressive episode since the breakup bring Edward back? None of these situations are exactly relaxing. They’re nervous breakdown-inducing and only add intensity to the relationship, something often mistaken for passion.

I know what that nervous excitement feels like. I’ve felt butterflies for a guy before, being completely awestruck by him. Only to have him break it off two days later. For a month, he managed to breadcrumb and lovebomb me. It sounds contradictory, but he made it possible.

He breadcrumingly lovebombed me.

Every morning he would text “buenos dias amor”, and every night “buenas noches amor” (Yes, he’d been calling me “amor” ever since the first date). But here’s the catch: not always.

Some evenings, he would only write “buenos noches”, without the “amor”, and I would spiral a tiny bit until 10 a.m. the next morning, when I got a “buenos dias amor” text. And this went on for a month; sometimes he’d call me “amor” and sometimes he wouldn’t, and every time my heart would drop, and I would wonder if the end was near. And one day, he only wrote “buenos dias”, after the night before also only having written “buenas noches”, and that afternoon I got an uncomfortable call saying that he doesn’t feel it between the two of us anymore.

The butterflies were a fan favourite of this guy.

But I’m not writing this section to hate on beautiful insects just because I got screwed over once. What I really want to know is: are butterflies the best way to judge a connection? Sure, you shouldn’t date someone you feel nothing for. But equally, the person who gives you constant anxiety isn’t right, either.

So perhaps butterflies aren’t very useful for measuring whether you’re in love, but maybe only for measuring how emotionally activated you are.

Because if the former were the case, I’d have been deeply in love with the love bomber, which I wasn’t. I would have felt love for M (read my why the first boy never treats you right post to see why that is so far from the truth here).

If butterflies are proof of love, why have I felt them for people I didn’t even want or was compatible with?

Were you also not able to stop having conversations with him? Because thinking about someone constantly doesn’t necessarily mean you know them; only talking to them does.

You could spend 8 hours thinking about someone while you’re bored at school or work, and 0 hours actually learning who they are. Most crushes operate like this, which is why I take issue and fight the urge to aggressively shake my friend who claims to be in love with her pain du moment. No, you are not; you can count all the interactions you’ve had with this guy in the hallway on one hand.

This is where the blank-space theory comes in. No, not the catchy Taylor Swift song, but a theory on projection.

People become easier to idealise when there are gaps. Those three interactions in the hallway? Your brain will start filling in the rest, and you’ll automatically assume they’re kind and funny and that they’d treat you right.

A perfect example of this can be found in Atonement. Cecilia and Robbie share one heated love confession while making love in the corner of a dark library. A couple of hours later, he is sent to jail for three years, during which they exchange letters, the entire time claiming everlasting love. Once he gets out, they have a short meetup in a café before Robbie gets shipped off to fight in the war, and again, they claim everlasting love. It’s a cute, tragic love story perfect for sad edits.

I’ll wait for you. Come Back.

But it’s not realistic. Because how much of their relationship actually existed, and how much in their imagination? A huge part of the emotional weight came from separation, longing, and possibility, not necessarily from the years of actually building a relationship.

This is not me saying that long-distance relationships don’t work; they do, but even then, a couple has to see each other every couple of months and at least try to talk at least a few times a week. Robbie was in jail and not allowed visitors for three years, and they exchanged a letter about once a week. They’ve only met under romantic circumstances twice in their 5-year-long “relationship”, once for those ten minutes in the library and once in that café.

One can make the argument that they’ve known each other for their entire lives before they confessed to having feelings for each other. But the truth is, they were platonic before. A relationship isn’t based on platonic memories of the other person; it is based on romantic instances a couple has shared together.

At this point, it was just projection and a pressure that it had to work out. Cecilia gave up her high-class lifestyle for him, became an overworked nurse, living in a shabby apartment and saving up money for a cottage on the beach for the two. Robbie’s only motivation throughout jail and war was the fantasy of being reunited with Cecilia. Both characters made huge sacrifices for each other based on a quickie in a library and a short chat over tea. They would have to work out in the end. They had to love each other, or it would’ve all been for nothing.

A lot of people aren’t in love with who someone is, but who they could become. They love to project potential and think of the future version they could become.

He’s so sweet underneath it all.

And once he works through his issues…

Maybe trims his facial hair a bit…

Gets a professional makeover…

Goes to weekly therapy…

Then he’ll be the perfect man for me!

And then when that guy doesn’t follow your perfect 10-step masterplan, you end up disappointed. Because you don’t love the shabby John sitting in front of you with holes in his boxers, you love Jonathan with his pearly white teeth, who dresses in the old money aesthetic after you redid his closet. You love who ketchup-stained Johnny boy could be. Keyword: could.

Potential is also a trap that predominantly women fall for. With this, I’m not saying that women are more delusional than men, but more so that women are socially encouraged to be investors. Ever since our youth, we’ve been told to look past appearance.

I distinctly remember my mom always telling me not to go for the ultra-attractive man, since they will only screw you over and cheat on you. But has any father ever told his strapping young boy not to go for the pretty girl because she’s arrogant and will end up leaving you for another man? I doubt it.

We’ve all seen those “girlfriend air” videos on TikTok where women show what their boyfriends looked like when they met versus now, and the man experienced this huge glowup, and all the comments are like, “Wow, you really saw a diamond in the rust!” “Girlie saw the potential” “You had a VISION”.

And not to roast my dad, but my mom also told me this story about how my dad had this horrible fashion taste, and he would wear these tight crocodile leather pants and platform black boots (my dad was a techno emo raver with a man ponytail) and how she gave him this glow up. Since I was a little girl, my mom always told me to look for the potential in a man. But she never gave such a speech to my brother.

I’m not saying to completely ignore potential. If you want to be a succesful career oriented woman in the future and are looking for the same in a partner, you should definitely look for people with drive and ambitious potential. But don’t go around mistaking donkeys for stallions either, babe.

Men mainly evaluate women based on their present selves. Rarely has a man looked at a woman and thought “If I show her a bunch of siren eye makeup tutorials, give her a 10-step Korean skincare routine, and encourage her to get a Pilates membership, she’ll become this bombshell girlfriend.” or “If I help her work through her trust issues, she’d be this excellent communicator and treat me well.” And finally, “Trust me. I can change her.” has no man ever said to his best friend over a beer. Men look at current attractiveness and desirability. They don’t look at the could be. They don’t project potential onto us, yet we’ve been trained to have a refined vision for it, like in Beauty and the Beast.

HAS THERE EVER BEEN A MOVIE ABOUT A MAN FALLING IN LOVE WITH A HIDEOUS MONSTER BECAUSE HE SAW HER INNER BEAUTY? As far as I’m aware, no.

Women are often taught to love the possibilities as if we’re mathematicians studying statistics. Possibilities are incredibly easy to project onto because they don’t exist yet. They’re a product of your imagination because you can’t be disappointed by a future version of someone.

You can imagine the future him, the committed him and the mature him all day long, but he could still be leaving you on delivered for half a day. So, to some of my friends, are you in love with the person, or with your own vision of them?

Ladies, please stop writing your name in the blank space of his potential future.

Start by taking him by page value. Value him for who he is now. Live in the present. If you can’t stop thinking about him and all the acts of kindness he’s done, and he truly treats you like a princess, then great, you’re not in love with his potential. However, I fear you may have become codependent if all you do is think about him.

But I’ve got a blank space, baby, and I’ll write your name - Taylor Swift

Obviously, you should feel cherished in your relationship; I’d be more worried if you weren’t. But feeling chosen is a thin line before you cross over into validation. Because do you love him, or did you love what he proves about you? That you are desirable and that people want you?

If you’ve grown up the ugly duckling among your friends, or felt insecure or always compared yourself to pretty girls, you know what I’m talking about, because being chosen is an ego boost. The first time someone says “I pick you”, it feels like you just took a bunch of cocaine and you’re ecstatic.

Out of all the prettier girls, smarter girls, cooler girls, he picked you.

It feels huge because you don’t just get a boyfriend; you get evidence that you’re desirable, lovable, and, most importantly, that you are enough. Which is why the first person who, out of their own free will, chooses you feels disproportionately important, and you become accommodating because this is the first guy, and you don’t want to miss out on all the opportunities your “prettier” friends already had. Being chosen by them feels like you finally become normal and get to experience all the normal things a girl should experience.

You want that first date, first kiss, first time, and you don’t want to let him go. After all those years of self-doubt and obsessively looking in the mirror, here is your shot. Here’s your chance to feel pretty and sexy, which is why letting go of that first guy is difficult because losing him feels like losing proof that you could be wanted. So you stay; you convince yourself that you must love him because otherwise you’ve “wasted” all of your firsts on someone you didn’t. And not to shamelessly self-plug, but I went deeper into this topic of feeling chosen in my previous essay, why the first boy never treats you right. If you’ve especially related to this section of the post, I think you’ll enjoy that article (click here to read).

We can’t deny that desirability is social currency, especially for women. We’ve always been told that our looks matter, and countless studies have come out saying that if you’re more attractive, you’re more likely to get the job, or if you’re prettier, people will naturally be more attentive to what you say. It’s been drilled into us that being attractive is important and that it opens doors. Not very feminist, but hey, if you can’t beat patriarchal beauty standards, lean into them to gain an advantage in an unfair world, am I right, ladies?

The billion-dollar beauty industry quite literally depends on our need for desirability. We’ve invented countless competitions and pitted women against each other to find out who is prettier. So naturally, in such a competitive world, when a boy shows interest in you, you feel validated and prettier. The same way that after you get rejected, you feel uglier. So you actually miss your boyfriend? Or do you miss how you are perceived through his eyes?

Being chosen feels amazing, but when taken too far, it makes us tolerate ridiculous things because that boy might be terrible, but at least he likes you! Haven’t we all heard once in our he likes you!” As if some random snot-picking kid on the back of the bus liking us and choosing us is enough of a reason to pursue them. So very early on, we learned to have that mindset and were not encouraged to ask ourselves if we even liked him.

Wanting to feel chosen also feels very Belly coded from The Summer I Turned Pretty. She spent absolute YEARS wanting Conrad, pining after him, not because she truly knows and loves him (cough, cough, projection, anybody?) but because his choosing her would mean she won. She beat Nicole, Aubrey and every other random girl who has liked Conrad. And she would become the girl. Luckily for you, I dove deeper into The Summer I Turned Pretty and analysed Belly’s relationship with each of the brothers, and I discuss why it’s so problematic in this post here. It’s called The Summer I Thought Dating Brothers Was Okay.

So sometimes I wonder, do my friends love their not-even-reaching-the-bare-minimum-standard boyfriends, or do they enjoy knowing that there was some other chick on his Snapchat but she ultimately won?

That’s it, I win. That’s it, I win. - Olivia Rodrigo

So do you love him? Or do you love the version of yourself that exists when you’re loved? Because when he looks at you suddenlty, you become

prettier

more confident

sexier

softer

more feminine

desirable

So maybe what you’re mourning at the end of the relationship isn’t him.

Maybe you’re mourning the person you got to be while he liked you. You got to be the hot girlfriend, and now that that title has been stripped away from you, what are you?

Girl, did you two just survive a zombie apocalypse and is he the last man left on Earth?

This is kind of the cousin to wanting to be chosen, because it’s the fear that nobody will ever again. It’s scarcity.

Because if feeling chosen is “He picked me”, then scarcity is “What if nobody else ever does?. If the former is an ego boost and a feeling of having won, then the latter is “I can’t afford to lose”.

I like to call this the “last train” phenomenon, and it largely applies to the girls who related to the paragraph in the earlier section about growing up “uglier” and starting to date around later. The girls who never got much attention and watched all their friends get boyfriends before they did. Because often they don’t think “I love him”, it’s “oh my god, what if this is my last chance and I blow it.”

What if I have to wait another three years?

What if nobody else wants me?

What if this is my peak and it’s all downhill from here?

What if he’s the best I can get?

And suddenly it doesn’t feel like there are 4 billion men on earth, but like Tod, who always blows you off to hang out with his boys, is the last fertile man roaming the planet. Again, I blame the media for this one because movies love scarcity. They popularised Soulmates and the search for The One. Finding your twin flame, following your red string, finding the person who’s destined to love you. Ladies, you only have one coupon. Don’t. Lose. It. It’s quite literally the plot of the first Hotel Transylvania movie: that a person can only zing once in their life.

Ultimately, scarcity is fundamentally fear. The fear of loneliness, of ageing on your own, not being picked again, having to start over and feeling undesirable. It’s the fear that you’re going to die alone even though you’re 19.

So you wouldn’t imagine being with anyone else?

Or do you refuse to imagine?

Those are two different things. One is love, and the other is anxiety.

I asked people how they knew they were in love. The curiosity monster inside of me was fed different answers like butterflies, constantly thinking about him, feeling chosen, or being able to imagine anyone else. And each answer technically made sense, but at the same time just felt wrong.

Maybe people are not falling in love too quickly. Maybe they are just calling too many different emotions “love.” It’s become a catch-all word for attachment, desire, validation, obsession, projection, anxiety, loneliness and nostalgia that all just get dumped into the Love Bucket.

Throughout this essay, I’ve explored attraction, anxiety, obsession, projection, validation, and scarcity, but I’m still left wondering what actually counts as falling in love.

Obviously, you probably should relate a tiny bit to the different answers my friends gave. You should feel excited about being with your partner. You shouldn’t feel neglected in a relationship and should feel special and wanted. You should feel chosen by your partner and not find out through a “hey girlie” text on Instagram that he’s also choosing three other girls. And you should feel like you want to be with them and only them, because otherwise, why are you in a monogamous relationship? The problem more so arises when you only lean into one of these aspects as your main pillar of why you “love” them.

But that still doesn’t answer what love is and what it’s supposed to feel like.

Perhaps nobody really knows.

And maybe the people who confidently tell me that “when you know, you know” are just better at lying to themselves than I am.

I’m not saying love isn’t real.

It is.

But maybe it’s less dramatic than we’ve been taught.

Maybe it isn’t meant to be an all-consuming force in your life.

Maybe it’s simply wanting to know someone and accepting who they are in the present with all their flaws and quirks, yet despite them, continuing to choose them so you can both grow together as better people. Maybe it’s simply feeling safe and calm.

But I’m not going to pretend that I know all the answers. To me, love is an ever-changing, intangible form that presents itself in different ways, yet we can never fully describe it, just as our brains will never grasp the concept of infinity. Which means I’ll probably keep interrogating my friends about their relationships and keep asking people uncomfortable questions because the curiosity monster cannot be satiated. And I’ll continue to be emotionally slutty and say things I shouldn’t because at the end of the day we are all just drifting through life on a floating rock. Why not be a bit messy and get your hands a bit dirty?

xx, Alegra

Just as a precaution, if anyone I know in real life finds this, the personal examples used in this essay are NOT about my first boyfriend. (And if he finds this, THIS IS NOT ABOUT YOU! I love you, you’re an amazing boyfriend. Now close this tab and move on. Thank you.)

Anyway, with that out of the way, this is a topic that has been percolating in my mind for a while now. I first started dating and getting more consistent male attention at the late age of 18. I’m not going to lie, my teenage years from 15-17, the ages people usually start frolicking around with the opposite gender and getting drunk or high in parks, were not very eventful. To the point that it was even an insecurity of mine because I thought I was “missing out” and not living the “normal teenage life” that gets romanticised in movies. I was just a kid with severe acne, a tooth gap, glasses, and frizzy curly hair that I hadn’t quite figured out how to style.

But, like most ugly ducklings, I turned into a swan and experienced a glow-up. Gone are the days of having food stuck in my braces and popping pimples in between classes; I became a young, pretty woman. I was now ready to venture into the fields and start my own journey of frolicking with boys. I was late to the game (according to my gorgeous friend who had been playing since she was 13), and so, I was eager to catch up, and it was under these circumstances that boy #1 entered my life, let’s call him M.

We had matched on Hinge. I know, it’s not a very cute meet-cute, but alas, we texted for about a week before we decided to meet up. Now I did experience what the internet calls a crashout, before our first date. I wanted to throw up, scream, cry, throw myself onto the train tracks, rip out my hair, you get the picture. I was nervous. Of course I was! Up until that point, I had had very limited romantic interaction with and exposure to XY-chromosome creatures. Outside of my male family members and my queer male friends, I hadn’t really interacted with boys much. My rice purity score was high, 90+, oh how they would have fought for a innocent damsel like me in the Middle Ages. But back to the point, I was feeling everything, anything and nothing at the same time.

We met up at the train station, went for a walk, briefly visited the Christmas market and afterwards sat down on a bench. I was mainly asking out-of-pocket questions. I mean, I was on a quest to find out as much as possible about the inner workings of the opposite gender; this was my opportunity! I pretty much interrogated him and treated him like an experimental hamster, but he didn’t seem to mind, he thought me “quirky” and “different”. I know, I’m not like the other girls.

We spent more than 4 hours together, and at one point, it started to rain, but we were too wrapped up in conversation to bother moving somewhere indoors. My rice purity score went down that fateful December night: we had held hands. Scandalous! My purity, gone! At some point, we both started shivering and decided to walk back to the train station. Hand in hand, then he put his arm around my shoulder while we hurried through the streets in the pouring rain, dying of laughter at our situation.

After a while, we stopped under a terrace to catch our breath, and it was the first time I really saw him. The whole date we had been walking side by side, or sitting side by side in the dark, and I had never really looked at him. Now here he was, standing in front of me, the wet hair, pinkish cheeks, water dripping down his face, the light brown eyes illuminated by the lights overhead, his drenched puffer jacket. I leaned back against the pillar as my eyes swooped over him, taking him in properly for the first time, until our eyes met. We were standing quite close, and I have to admit there was a romantic undertone, but first date nerves probably hindered him from kissing me then. Instead, we let out a simultaneous quiet chuckle before continuing our walk through the darkened city until we reached the train station, said goodbye, and rode away in different directions.

My first date. I had been on a first date. Yet, I felt absolutely nothing.

It had gone pretty well, according to my more seasoned friends, yet I still felt nothing. I was completely emotionally numb. Nothing. No butterflies, no giddiness, just hollow emptiness. Was this normal? I didn’t know; I had never been on a date before. I had no comparison and looking back, I think that absence became the root of many of my future problems with M. Later, I realised I wasn’t the only one to have experienced it. The lack of comparison not only caused problems for me but also for my friends and other girls.

Over the next few weeks, we kept going on dates, usually finding a bench with a nice view and talking for 4 hours. Yet one night, in a dimly lit bar, while I was nursing a hibiscus cocktail, a friend of mine asked me: “Do you have feelings for him?”

I came up blank.

Because what does it truly mean to have feelings for someone? I mean, can you have feelings for someone after only having gone on four dates? Should you have feelings after having gone on four dates? I was spiralling.

Then, another question: “Or do you at least like him?”

But what does like mean?

Do I like talking to him? I mean, sure, I usually ask all the questions, and he’s the one who talks. But that’s normal, right? Does the girl ask more than the guy? It’s normal that if I don’t start talking, we walk in silence, right? I mean, people have different strengths when it comes to conversation? Some are listeners, and some are talkers. And I mean, he does have interesting stories, so maybe I’m more of a listener, right? So sure, I enjoy talking to him. But what does liking someone mean? That’s sooo middle school.

My friend patiently sipped her drink while I nonsensically rambled on about the meaning of like, and after a while, I got another question: “Girl, do you find him attractive at least?”

The rambling stopped.

I mean, what does physical attraction even feel like? That’s such a broad and complicated question.

Is he Brad Pitt? No. But like on that one date he looked good, but at the train station after not so much. But I mean, who looks good in train station lighting? And, well, asking if I find him hot is difficult to answer, since I mainly see his side profile during our bench dates. Sure, it’s usually pretty dark, and when I see him in the light, I find him alright-looking. But he’s not ugly. He had a haircut, so he doesn’t quite look like his Hinge photos, but he could grow it out again. And he does look good in that picture, but less so in that. So it’s complicated. Again, what’s physical attraction even supposed to feel like? I don’t turn into Niagara Falls when I see him, duh, but I don’t find him repulsive either.

An eyeroll from my friend, before she started laughing and said: “Maybe you’re just aromatic or something”.

I pretty much had an identity crisis after that.

Quickly, I started counting all the boys I’d sort of talked to before and whether I liked them, but then again, how could I know if I liked them, since it was usually a short 2-week fling of intense conversation? I didn’t know. I couldn’t answer because there weren’t really any guys before him, so how was I supposed to know?

And that was the problem.

There weren’t any guys before him; hence, I had no one to measure him up against.

I had no emotional standards yet, no understanding of what healthy treatment looks like, and absolutely no experience in distinguishing attention from compatibility, desire from care, or inconsistency from chemistry. Yet my endless rambling and inability to come up with a clear answer to any of the questions above probably already tells you that, no, I didn’t have feelings for him. Did I maybe like him? Sure. Did I find him physically attractive? Somewhat. Did I continue dating him longer than I should have? Absofuckinglutely.

As we continued dating, little things started to bother me a bit. As mentioned before, I had fallen into the listener role on our dates. He would rarely ask me questions because he was a strict follower of the philosophy that if a person wanted to share something, they would just say it, no reason to ask.

If my dating life were a movie, the audience would’ve been yelling, “Dump him! He’s an ass!” Did I hear said fictional audience in my head? No. Did I hear my friend’s not-so-fictional voice telling me the same thing? Yes. Did I listen? No. Instead, I made excuses.

The same phenomenon occurred in our texts. If I didn’t keep texting to keep the conversation going, it would end. Oh, but no, that’s not a red flag! Of course not. He’s even told me he prefers talking in person and that he’s not a big texter! Why bother texting someone when you could tell them in person when you see them the next time?

“A breath of fresh air, really. Like, who wants to date a chronic texter! I swear it’s sweet and thoughtful.” I had said to my friend, who again rolled her eyes, defeated. She had accepted that I was in too deep to be saved; I had to go through this canon event of girlhood on my own: Dating a guy who doesn’t treat you that well, but you stay because it could always be worse.

Did I also mention that he would always bring up his ex? And ramble on and on about how no one ever made him feel like she did, and she was heartbroken when they broke up?

At this point, this Substack article is just a public humiliation ritual.

Did I cut him off? I clearly didn’t have feelings for him, didn’t find him that attractive, he never asked me a lot of questions, it was always about him, and he keeps bringing up the emotionally unavailable ex that he swears he’s moved on from? Again: No.

In my head, I knew the obvious red flags to watch out for, but the truth is, when confronted with them, I didn’t take them at face value. I spun them around and around because I didn’t want to accept the simple truth that he wasn’t the greatest guy to have a romantic connection with. We lacked chemistry, that zsa zsa zsu.

But I was in denial and blinded by the fact that I had finally found a guy who was into me. Therefore, I ended up being overly accommodating to his needs, rationalising bad behaviour, and refusing to let that damn man go.

When he called me after a couple of weeks of dating to tell me that he just didn’t feel that strong click, I was determined to keep him around, not because I was in love with him, but because I didn’t want to lose my daily dose of male validation.

And now, looking back, I see something similar among my friends, because arguably they all hung around the first guy too long, no matter how much of an ass he was. We were all clinging to these crusty men and desperately trying to make it work, or at least trying to keep them around as friends.

We had no perception of what healthy treatment looked like, so we were willing to beg multiple times for the bare minimum, not knowing that out there there were guys who just did that without being told. Sure, we all were fed content by the Wizard Liz and by Tam Kaur and any other “high-value woman” influencer, but even their strong-minded YouTube videos weren’t strong enough to fight how being chosen for the first time changes your perception of yourself.

The first boy sets the baseline for what you think is normal, and sure, deep down maybe we all knew that these immature boys weren’t meant for us, but we became emotionally invested in succeeding because he was our first, and failing wasn’t an option. Failure with him felt like failing as a womanhood and desirability itself. My real fear wasn’t losing M; it was the thought of what if nobody chooses me after this? What if this is my one shot? I had already invested hours upon hours of my life into this, into him. I couldn’t just back down; this all had to be for something, right?

And my friends had a similar mindset. We weren’t ready to cut our loses, so we all stayed for far too long, we defended them, and it took us a while to emotionally detach from them.

And I don’t think this comes from my friends and me being male-obsessed bimbos, but ultimately I believe it comes down to how society conditioned us since childhood. We’ve been taught to romanticise emotional unavailability and inconsistency since we were little girls because, let’s be real, we’ve all been told at one point that that one boy being mean to us meant that “he likes you”. We’ve also been sold the idea that “love takes hard work,” isn’t something that comes easily, and that we must “fight for it tooth and nail”. And we did. Or at least my friends and I did, and ended up getting screwed over by below-average, crusty, musty, dusty, immature boys.

Not to worry, we all eventually freed ourselves from their grasp, but embarrassingly, it took us way longer than it should have. These boys were by no means our first loves, but they represented our first taste of male validation and of being desired. And I think that after a while they, too, realised that, and some even took advantage of the fact that we had no one to compare them to; they were just trying to see how low they could go before we left (the answer is sub-par level, underground-bunker-type low).

I’m not joking when I say that this is something a guy said to one of my friends. He quite literally admitted to treating her like a donkey and dangling a carrot in front of her face. Men really are pure evil.

People say that comparison is the thief of joy. And usually I would agree, but when it comes to our first romantic experience with a guy, some comparison would’ve done wonders for me. M only survived in my life as long as he did because of the lack thereof. Had I compared myself more, perhaps I would have realised sooner that I was settling. So yes, people say that comparison is the thief of joy, but sometimes it’s what makes you realise you deserve more and gives you the courage to stop excavating emotional availability from emotionally immature boys like archaeologists digging for dinosaur bones.

Put. Down. The. Shovels. Girls.

I mean it.

In many ways, my Mr M was Carrie’s Mr Big. I liked the idea of him more than I wanted him. He represented something I wanted, a full social life and validation, and in a way, landing him would feed my sick and twisted ego. So I kept going back to him and let him jerk me around. Except that, unlike Carrie, I didn’t end up with my manchild. I stopped seeing him after I decided there was nothing left for me to mine there. And on the train back home, I did feel a bit sad because he truly did make an impact on my life, some positive and some negative, but he gave me something valuable and indispensable. Comparison. He, in a way, ensured that I would end up with a guy like him ever again, and to that I’m very grateful. Thank you, M.

Arrivederci, au revoir, forgive my French, but fuck you, ta-ta. Goodbye means you’ll be losin’ me for life. - Sabrina Carpenter

xx, Alegra

I know that I’m two years late to The Summer I Turned Pretty craze, but alas, I didn’t have a Substack in 2022-2024, nor did I know of Substack’s existence. But I’m here now in 2026, exercising my free will to write about things that have long since passed the trend cycle. Fair warning: I did not rewatch the series for this post, so I’m writing purely from memory.

Originally, The Summer I Turned Pretty was a trilogy of young adult romance books written by Korean-American author Jenny Han. The three books were published in consecutive years from 2009 until 2011, and in 2022, the trilogy was picked up by Amazon Prime and turned into a hit series.

Quickie Overview

For those of you who apparently had better things to do than watch a romance centring on a girl with the nickname of an organ, be incredibly indecisive when it came to her dating life, here is a quick summary.

Isabelle “Belly” Conklin spends every summer in New England at Cousins Beach with her mother, older brother Steven, her best friend Taylor, her mother’s best friend Susannah and her two sons, Conrad and Jeremiah Fisher. Since Belly was born, Susannah would always joke about how she was destined to end up with one of her sons, and Isabelle took that to heart, literally. For the longest time, she has had a crush on Conrad, the older of the two brothers, but he never reciprocated, treating her only as a sister. But one summer, after ditching her glasses and getting her braces removed, she experiences a glow-up, and all of a sudden, both Fisher brothers show interest in her. Of course, our protagonist faces the impossible choice of having to choose between them. Jeremiah or Conrad? I mean, it’s not like she could date anyone else; she either becomes Isabelle Fisher or dies a spinster.

Obviously, a flat-out internet war broke out over this, with people divided into two camps: Team Jeremiah or Team Conrad. Friendships were lost over this, people got doxed over this, and families were torn apart over this; it really was just that serious. But while everyone was fighting over which brother Belly should choose, I was sitting there wondering why no one considered the psychological consequences of marrying into this family (while simultaneously furiously texting my friend Team Jeremiah arguments. But mainly, I was sitting there wondering how anyone thought this was ethical — most of the time.)

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The Problem With “Connie Baby” Conrad

He’s the older, moody brother with a string of unserious girlfriends, who smokes and gets drunk on the beach yet is caring and observant (when he wants to be) —the internet’s favourite brother.

He was elevated to the status of a mythological first-love figure, making Belly incapable of making rational decisions. She’s been pining after him for years. YEARS. And everybody knew. Half of the internet fell in love with him, and self-appointed themselves as his ruthless defender, whatever his actions may be, because sweet introvert Connie Baby can do no wrong.

Throughout the series, he was often emotionally unavailable, especially in the first two seasons; however, his loyal hounds defend this by saying that he suffered from depression and anxiety over Susannah’s cancer. And to a certain extent, I agree that his actions were partly shaped by his mom’s deteriorating health; that doesn’t excuse the fact that he wasn’t a great boyfriend.

Conrad isn’t necessarily a bad person. He’s simply the exact kind of emotionally inconsistent first love that teenage girls are taught to romanticise. We grow up hearing that love is a battle to be fought, that it must be earned, that love is war. But somewhere within that battle, I think Belly lost herself to the idea of Conrad. What could be. What he could be. And his emotional distance and withdrawal all those years only intensify her obsession and strengthen her fighting spirit to “win” him over.

And while this isn’t entirely Belly’s fault, a large part of it stems from Susannah, who emotionally conditioned her into this dynamic from childhood. Belly was never really allowed to imagine a future beyond the Fisher boys. It had to be one of them. Susannah always told her so: “I knew since the moment you were born that you were destined for one of my boys.”

I find this particularly cruel of Susannah, even if it was never her intention. In a way, she strips Belly of her autonomy before Belly is even old enough to understand what autonomy means. She was just a young girl, after all. But I also think this reflects a broader societal pattern. How many girls grow up being told that if a boy is mean to you, it’s because he likes you? That if he ignores you, he’s probably just being shy because he likes you? How many times have we been told that boys will do x, y, and z because they like you? It’s because he likes you! We are taught from an early age to interpret emotionally distant behaviours as depth, as something mysterious and worth excavating, like we are in a mine field. I mean, behind that facade, there absolutely has to be something more, right? Behind the coldness must lie hidden feelings and love, which explains why he’s acting like that. All of this is rather romantic, right? softly peeling away all his layers, chipping away at stone to find the diamond that is his love. It was always there, ladies! You just have to uncover it!

On top of that, we are often taught that we cannot simply choose a boy; he must choose us. They’re like these wild horses, and we’re psychic horse whisperers that they choose to trust, so that we can then ride into the sunset without saddles and leave earthly bounds behind. There’s this strange type of Free Reign or Ostwind performance attached to this whole desirability thing. You must outshine the other girls and prove yourself worthy of his golden touch of attention. For Belly, that might have been Nicole or any of the other girls Conrad dated or hooked up with. I think his appeal to Belly was partly that he felt unattainable. He’s older, mysteriously distant, and has always treated Belly like a kid sister. I already know what her internal monologue sounded like: I mean, he would never go for me, right? The younger girl he’s always viewed as a sister? But what if? What if I manage to change his mind? What if one summer I’ll finally be able to attain him?

And I think that fantasy matters more to Belly than Conrad himself.

In my opinion, Belly barely knows Conrad outside of the idealised version she has created. Her nostalgia for their shared childhood makes their relationship seem more profound than it is. But at the same time, I can’t entirely blame her for pining after him. First love, combined with scarcity, nostalgia, and years of longing, is a dangerously deadly combo. Conrad becomes more than just the handsome boy she grew up with; he becomes a symbol of her childhood, her growing up, and finally of her feeling desirable.

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Jeremiah Was Never Given A Fair Chance

Jeremiah. Sweet Jeremiah. Now I’m not going to sugarcoat the fact that I heavily favoured Jere in the series (and the books! Yes, I read the books before everyone comes for me, and on top of that, I even read them in French, which doesn’t add anything, but I just wanted to share that accomplishment).

Now I know that Jeremiah was thoroughly hated and piled on, and any person brave enough to speak up for him was practically burned at the stake (me included). Regardless, I have come here to defend him because he was never given a fair chance. The audience had already decided that Conrad was endgame, and therefore, he was cast aside. He was punished and crucified for literally anything, whereas Conrad escaped without a scratch. Viewers loved Conrad for his mysteriousness (which, in reality, was just him being emotionally distant), but when Jeremiah starts acting emotionally tortured, like Conrad, he gets hated on. He gets punished for not being emotionally distant and mysterious, for not being the nonchalant type. Still, when he does eventually give Belly the cold shoulder (after she quite literally played with his feelings and treated him like a backup), all of a sudden, he is this horrible, immature guy.

Trust me when I say that I’ve heard the same arguments repeated over and over again against Jere, which I don’t find to be fair, seeing as the story constantly gives Conrad grace for his behaviour while Jere gets thrown under the bus. There is a clear double standard (and yes, I know I’m biased), but I am here to rebut the most common arguments from Team Conrad, not to “prove” that Jeremiah is the better, but to simply point out the unfairness of the accusations. Just because I was Team Jeremiah doesn’t mean that I wanted Belly to end up with him. This whole essay is about why she shouldn’t have ended up with either of them, and why the whole triangle dynamic was unhealthy and overly romanticised by the fandom.

A very common phrase I saw thrown around was “Jeremiah only liked her after she turned pretty,” and I really just had to take a deep breath because... That. Is. Literally. The. Entire. Premise. Guys, it’s called The Summer I Turned Pretty! Turned Pretty. See that verb there? She wasn’t always considered “pretty”, and Conrad quite literally admitted to never seeing her as anything more than a kid before that fateful summer. It was the whole point. Belly had been pining after him for years, and he never reciprocated. Yet only Jeremiah gets called shallow, even though it was he who stuck by Belly’s side when she was sick, played with her, and danced with her without being asked. The bond was there long before the glow up.

Yet I will hear, “Oh, but remember the muffin scene? Remember when Belly wanted to eat a muffin and Jeremiah and Steven were holding it out of reach, and Conrad stepped in?”

As a matter of fact, yes, I do remember that scene, and I think Belly and the viewers alike overly romanticised it. Again, Conrad only ever saw her as a silly little defenceless child, and he stepped in to get the older boys to stop teasing her, which is exactly what an older brother figure would do. And I don’t know about you people, but my brother would step in during a muffin drama like that (or not, depending on how generous he is feeling that day). Still, he would absolutely not waste an entire week of summer watching my favourite movies and keeping me company while I’m sick.

I don’t know what type of brothers you have, but mine certainly isn’t like that. If, apparently, everybody’s brother is like that, then I really should complain to the manufacturer about mine since he’s clearly defective. Point being, Conrad’s actions are always romanticised, but Jere’s aren’t.

Another phrase that also often gets thrown in favour of Conrad around is “He was grieving his mom, that’s why he hurt her and broke up with her at prom”. Grief explains pain and sadness, but doesn’t justify mistreating others. He chose to be emotionally absent with Belly. And need I remind everyone that Conrad and Jere are brothers? Brothers. Conrad wasn’t the only one grieving his mom. As a matter of fact, Conrad wasn’t even around while his mom was sick (sure, he was in college, but again, it was only a more or less 2h car ride), Jere was her sole caretaker, yet he doesn’t get any credit for that.

Everyone always throws around the Debutant Ball fiasco to point out that Jere also ditched Belly at a dance, yet did we all forget that that was Conrad’s fault? He chose to hide Susannah’s cancer from Jeremiah, and when Jere did eventually find out, he had no one to lean on, and that pain was never acknowledged.

Now the thing that always gets thrown in Jeremiah’s face, the thing used to justify Bonrad’s endgame, the ultimate pride and joy of Team Conrad: “Jeremiah is a cheater, he cheated on her”. And I’m sorry to say, but they were technically broken up or on a break, and when you’re on a break, everything goes unless made explicit that they are still exclusive but need some time apart. I even rewatched their fight scene in S3 E2 and transcribed it for you. To set the scene, Jere was going to go to Cabo with his frat, and didn’t tell Belly about it since it was a last-minute decision, and Belly dislikes frats, and Jere feels like she is judging him for being in one and calling him stupid. Here is exactly what Jere said before storming off.

Keyword: Let’s just end it. End it. I mean, ending it quite literally means breaking up, as far as I’m aware. And to further prove that Jere did think that he’d ended it here is their interaction after he came back from spring break in Cabo.

Now, clearly, it was a misunderstanding because Jere thought that they were broken up, but Belly didn’t. However, I think that the words “let’s just end it” make it quite clear what Jere meant. And yes, you could argue that he should’ve, after realising that there had been a miscommunication, been honest about what happened with Lacie Barone, I’ll give you that. But let’s not pretend that Belly and Conrad weren’t also acting in a grey area a lot.

Remember when they almost kissed in S1 on the Fourth of July, while Belly was in a relationship with Cam Cameron and Conrad was seeing Nicole? And I know I’ll now get people saying, “but they didn’t because Jeremiah shot a firework at them! And that shows that he’s immature and jealous! Ha!” I’m not denying that Jere’s doing that was a dumb, emotional move, but it was clearly meant as a distraction and not as an act of violence. And let’s all be honest, if he hadn’t done that, they would have absolutely kissed and cheated on their respective partners. So, Jeremiah was actually doing them a favour because, through his actions, Belly and Conrad escaped the cheating allegations.

Also, let’s not be too quick in shoving it under a rug that Belly kissed Conrad on the beach at the end of Season 1 after Jeremiah had already admitted his feelings for her in the pool. She had heavily implied that she wanted something with him after admitting she reciprocated his feelings, making out with him in the pool, and going to the Debutant Ball with him, and after all of that, she kissed his brother. Yet people often choose to ignore that, because, after all, why does it matter if Belly and Conrad are going to end up together anyway?

Throughout their relationship, Belly always compared Jeremiah to Conrad and kept secrets from him. Did we all forget that she never told him that she spent Christmas with her ex-boyfriend, aka his brother?

My point is that if Conrad gets to be “complicated” because he is dealing with his mother’s cancer. Then. So. Does. Jere. Susannah has two children, and both are allowed to be devastated. If Belly get’s to follow her heart and go after the one she loves (in that moment), then so does Jeremiah. The bar for him is so much higher, and we should acknowledge the double standard and admit that he added things of value to the story, like love, patience, and selflessness.

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The Problem With Becoming Isabelle Fisher

Putting Team Conrad and Team Jeremiah aside, can we all acknowledge that this entire storyline is diabolical? In the end, it doesn’t matter which brother she would’ve ended up with because it would’ve been messed up either way. She dated brothers, and consistently went back and forth between them in each season. No normal family survives this; Conrad and Jeremiah will now have a strained relationship forever. Belly didn’t just choose a boyfriend or husband; she permanently altered the entire family structure.

What she had with Jeremiah wasn’t a quick summer fling where she kissed him in the pool, and afterwards, she and Conrad ended up getting married. On the contrary, she dated Jeremiah longer than she dated Conrad. They were together for four years and engaged, whereas she dated Conrad for only a year. And obviously, as one does in long-term relationships, she slept with both of them, which, in my opinion, makes it even weirder, especially for the brother.

Imagine you’re in bed with your girlfriend and you remember that your own brother has been in this situation before, and not only that, but for four years, which is almost half a decade.

I find this predicament especially awkward in the series, though less so in the books. In the books, Belly never slept with either of them, and to be clear, I’m not trying to slut-shame her. I’m just pointing out that sleeping with someone is a different level of intimacy, and doing that with brothers is understandably awkward for everyone involved. Jeremiah always knew that she lost her virginity to Conrad, and Conrad will always know that most of her experience comes from Jeremiah.

I’m not going to sit here and pretend that I myself never had a Belly moment. Because I did. I was sort of dating this guy, but I was actually more physically attracted to his brother, who was also closer to my age. And, well, I was a bit unhinged back then, and when he showed me a picture of his brother, I audibly gasped, whistled, and made a joke about how I picked the wrong brother… I know I was being very messy, but the guy took it in good fun and admitted that he probably should join his brother in the gym more often. But I never would have gone so far as to try to make a move on the brother, because that would have been incredibly awkward.

So, to a certain point, I can understand Belly. I have been in her shoes before, but at this point, the girl is collecting the Fisher boys like limited-edition Labubus, with Adam Fisher being the only family member left that she hasn’t gotten involved with.

I mean, think of the kids! Imagine Conrad and Belly having a daughter in the future, whom they probably named Susannah, and one evening she comes trotting up to them with a photo album from Belly’s college days. There are pictures of her mom with Auntie Anika and Auntie Taylor, but most of them are of her with Uncle Jeremiah.

“Mommy, why are you and Uncle Jeremiah kissing in this picture?” asks Susannah, with bright, big eyes.

Belly and Conrad exchange a glance before she replies, “Oh well, Mommy actually used to date Uncle Jeremiah back in college!”

The little girl, mindblown, gasps, “What! How? Uncle Jeremiah?”

Her mom nods, “We actually even almost got married after being together for four years! But Mommy loved your daddy very much and decided at the last minute not to marry Uncle Jeremiah. In the end, I married your dad, and now we have you! Now go to bed, sweetheart, it’s getting late.”

See what I mean? Downright weird, outlandish, strange, ghastly even! (Yes, I did go on Thesaurus to find synonyms for weird. I can’t even imagine how awkward Thanksgiving would be after that. With little Susannah, going up to her uncle and blurting out, “You were almost my daddy!”

Need I say more about how Belly marrying into the Fisher family is downright problematic?

Belly, There Are Other Men Out There.

Towards the end of the series, I was honestly rooting for Belly to end up alone and realise that the world is full of men who aren’t Fisher boys. But alas, I knew that was futile. She had to end up with one of them. I mean, internet outrage would’ve broken out if she had ended up with Jeremiah, but if she had chosen herself and ended up alone, I’m not joking when I say that a mob of raging teenage girls and twenty-somethings would’ve raided the streets. Windows would’ve been broken, cars smashed, and tyres slashed. In no universe of television entertainment would the female protagonist turn her back on her romantic interests in favour of herself. But one can dream.

Despite the improbability of it happening, I truly believe that Belly should’ve ended up alone. The healthiest thing would have been for her to choose herself and grow up outside the Fisher family. There is a beautiful, wide world beyond Cousins Beach, a world I highly recommend she explore to broaden her perspective. A world in which she might learn to separate nostalgia from love and understand that just because someone is your first love, it doesn’t mean that you should end up with them.

Dear Belly, you are a bright young woman who, at the young age of twenty, decided to cross over to a different continent and learn a new language. You managed to build a life all on your own, you made friends, found a job, and even a beautiful apartment with a view of the Sacre-Coeur. You are smart and capable, and you even had the courage to call off a wedding only minutes before walking down the aisle. Not many people have that prowness, that spirit. There is so much more to this life than loving a Fisher boy, and you are so much more than a girl who one summer turned pretty. I hope you know that.

xx

Alegra

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Taylor Swift’s documentary miniseries “The End of an Era” began streaming on December 12th, 2025, on Disney+. And as a survivor of the Ticketmaster war, for which I sacrificed attending my history lessons, I went to the Eras Tour in 2024, despite having my biology final the next morning, and I obviously binged-watched the series upon its release.

In the first episode, she’s seen listening to an audiobook during downtime before one of her shows in London. While she never named the book that was playing in the background of the episodes, Swifties quickly went to work on finding out which book she was listening to based on these few sentences, “...casting spotlights here and there across the ground. At a certain point, Tracy understood where they were going. Under normal circumstances, she would have felt afraid. She was typically a follower....” which was quickly identified as The God of the Woods by Liz Moore, published in 2024.

As a girl who likes to read, I obviously also religiously watch Jack Edwards YouTube videos (he is, after all, the internet’s residing librarian), and I naturally came across his vlog of when he visited Singapore and was reading The God of the Woods, a book he started reading because of the buzz surrounding it after the release of the documentary.

As if propelled by the God of Emails that day, I fortuitously found a newsletter from my regional bookstore that had almost been lost to the black hole that is my spambox, gifting me a discount code for my birthday. A code that would soon expire. And so, equipped only with an almost empty packet of chewing gum as my source of food and Google Maps as my trusted guide, I bravely trekked and hashed my way through dense concrete buildings, avoiding busy areas where I might end up as prey of the wild ferocious tram drivers and ended up in the three-story high bookstore to pick up my new read of the month (except that it ended up being my read of the week as I finished reading it in 5 days).

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Quickie Overview

The God of the Woods is a double mystery thriller that alternates mainly between 1961 and 1975. It centres on the wealthy East Coast banking family, the Van Laars, who have a holiday home in the Adirondack Mountains and own a summer camp there. Back in 1961, their only son, Peter IV “Bear” Van Laar, disappeared without a trace, and fourteen years later, in 1975, their daughter, Barbara Van Laar, also disappeared from the family’s summer camp. Did lightning strike twice, bringing coincidental tragedy upon the same cold, rich family, or was it murder?

The book alternates between the perspectives of Alice, the mother of the two children; Louise, the camp counsellor responsible for Barbara’s group; Tracy, Barbara’s friend at camp; and Judyta, the first female detective at the Bureau of Criminal Investigation, working the case of the missing Van Laar girl.

As already mentioned, I grossly overestimated how long it would take me to finish the book (I refuse to learn from my past mistakes of assuming any book would take me longer than a month to read). I reached the last page in under a week—now holding my copy (a rare pleasure these days, as I mainly read on my Kindle for convenience), with its glossy cover bent out of shape from stuffing it into my bag and its pages wavy and warped from when I spilt water over it. A few mysterious bright blue splotches on the fore-edge, it bears the signs of use (or abuse, for those of you who take meticulous care of your books. I, for one, use my books like Jane Birkin used her Birkin bags: until they’re beautifully battered and scratched.) All those hours spent turning and dog-earing pages until I reached the very end, gave a happy sigh and immediately logged into my Goodreads to give the book my rating, which I will reveal at the end.

Why It Works

Before I dive into my niche critiques and, quite frankly, odd (even slightly psychopathic) opinions, I’ll quickly give a basic overview of why it was a good read overall. To quote the quote on the back cover given by Clare Chambers (Author of Small Pleasures), it was “a wonderful double mystery, brilliantly plotted and perfectly paced”. Now I only agree on the second half of the quote (I’ll get into why later). It was brilliantly plotted, no doubt not a small feat with the constantly changing perspectives. In total, we had nine different point of views: the four main perspectives mentioned above as well as the point of view of Vic Hewitt, the former groundskeeper and camp director of Camp Emerson; TJ Hewitt, Vic’s only daughter and current camp director; Carl Stoddard, a gardener, volunteer fireman and the person framed for Bears disappearance; Jacob Sluiter, an escaped felon hiding out in the woods, and finally Barbara herself.

Personally, I never got the impression that the different points of view convoluted the story. Nor did I get annoyed by the POV changes, as often happens when the author switches perspective right when the current character’s POV is getting interesting, causing the plot to lose momentum. The story was also well paced, the chapters were short, and the simpler writing style was clear and to the point. No meandering sentences or paragraphs. Overall, a rather quick and easy read - a page turner if you will.

Who is this Chapter About Again?

However, a critique I have of the POVs is that their language and style weren’t distinctive enough. If someone had covered up the name at the top and censored out revealing information such as their job, I wouldn’t have known who the chapter was about. Granted, the story was written in the third person, hence giving the reader a more removed sense of the characters. Still, a bit of variety in language would have been interesting in my opinion, since I found it odd that thirteen-year-old Tracy would have the same vocabulary as the middle-aged characters like Carl Stoddard or Alice Van Laar.

Indigenous Baiting??

A small stylistic distinction was, however, made for the chapters focusing on Jacob Sluiter. A change I didn’t much appreciate since I felt that I had been indigenous catfished. Jacob Sluiter, as already mentioned, is an escaped felon, a sexual abuser and murderer to be precise, and he has been hiding out in the woods and in empty holiday homes while trekking his way back to his “ancestral land”. Now I obviously drew the conclusion that he must be of Native American descent, and there would be a plot line of how the Van Laars unjustly came into ownership of the piece of land now called the Van Laar Preserve. And that it would serve as commentary on how the wealthy chase out indigenous communities to build their large sprawling mansions. That didn’t end up being the case, however, and Jacob Sluiter, when talking about his “ancestral land”, was actually talking about the land his Dutch immigrant grandfather bought in the 19th century. Yes, a white man was calling a plot of land in the state of New York his “ancestral home”.

This sort of indigenous baiting didn’t only occur once, but twice in the form of Tessie Jo “TJ” Hewitt. In one of Louise’s POVs, TJ revealed to her that she has an isolated cabin deep in the woods, reachable only by canoe, a hut built by “her people”. By this phrasing, she meant, yet again, her white grandfather.

Now, these white characters using romanticised phrasings like “their people” and “ancestral land” doesn’t quite sit right with me. Especially knowing about the issues Native American communities still face today in their fight to reclaim their ancestral land and culture. As already mentioned, a plotline about the erasure of indigenous folk and white privilege would have been interesting and added more depth to the story. However, instead, we only got a throwaway line about how the “indians” still sometimes hunt in the surrounding woods.

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Catfish-esque Cover and Title

While the original HarperCollins cover is lovely, I don’t think it quite fits the genre. Originally, when I saw the book, I thought it would be some sort of literary fiction, not a thriller, and the title certainly doesn’t help. The God of the Woods reads more like a fantasy about forest entities than a mystery centred on a wealthy family with generational issues of missing children. The Borough Press edition, the edition my bookstore stocked, feels far more fitting for the novel’s genre, with its darker colours, foggy woods and a deep lake.

While I prefer the Borough Press cover, it did spoil the ending for me. A lone girl in a canoe is clearly depicted on the cover. As soon as TJ mentioned halfway through the book that she has a cabin deep in the woods, only accessible by canoe, I immediately came to two conclusions for a possible ending: Either Bear was alive, and TJ had kept him hidden all these years, or it was Barbara who was alive and hiding out there.

!SPOILERS AHEAD!

Drumroll please… Barbara’s alive! And she was, in fact, hiding out in the cabin built by TJ’s “people” (eyeroll). Turns out, TJ and Barbara had planned this for months and had even stocked the cabin with all the necessities Barbara would need to survive on her own for a couple of months, until the search for her had cooled off and TJ could come up and take care of her.

Barbara. Seriously?

Before I get into my disappointment with the ending, I have a niche — and, quite frankly, unnecessary — complaint that comes down to my personal preference that I would like to share—namely, Barbara. Not Barbara as a character, but Barbara as a name.

Now, there is a reason Barbara was named as she was: her father, Peter III, wanted it, reinforcing the theme that Alice had little to no autonomy in her marriage. Alice had actually wanted to name her daughter Charlotte, but her husband had gone ahead without her and already filled out all the forms with the name Barbara.

A few weeks after her daughter’s birth, Alice looked up the name and found out that it was of Greek origin and meant “foreign woman” or “strange”. Alice already felt guilty knowing that she would never love Barbara as unconditionally and deeply as she had loved Bear, because the couple had conceived another child only to continue the family legacy and serve as a sort of “replacement” for Bear. And having a daughter whose name means foreign” or “barbaric” obviously unsettled her.

So while the name Barbara did have its purpose, I didn’t think it fit. As I mentioned, this is just a personal preference, but I do not like the name Barbara at all. I don’t think it fits a 13-year-old, and having the character the novel is centred around named Barbara just made me cringe. I couldn’t take the name choice seriously as it felt like some sort of joke. Barbara? Oh no, Barbara went missing! It’s just one of those stereotypical grandma names like Agatha or Gertrude that I can’t ever imagine a young person having, and every time the name came up, I just had to laugh. Again, I do see that there was “reasoning” behind the name choice, but to be honest, it didn’t add much to the plot. The reader already understood that Barbara would never live up to Bear, and that her parents would never love her as much as they had their son. We didn’t need a short paragraph of Alice explaining the meaning behind Barbara to get the message.

Alternative Names Because I’m a Barbara Hater

Since I have too much time on my hands as of late, I thought it would be fun to come up with some alternative names (unemployment core activity). Now, if we decide to stick to the meaning “foreign” (according to Nameberry), we could have gotten the name Aliena, which has Latin origins. Not a personal favourite of mine as Aliena Van Laar sounds like a Wattpad character; however, I’ll take it any day over Barbara.

Other names we could have gotten:

• Sabine Van Laar: The Sabines were a group of Italians who were considered “foreigners” by the Romans.

• Lilith Van Laar: In Jewish and Mesopotamian mythology. Lilith was considered Adam’s first wife before she was banished from the Garden of Eden for disobedience. And Barbara was known to be a bit of a rebel who undermined her parents. The name is also quite fitting since her parents wanted to send her off to Élan, a faraway boarding school, as a sort of “exile”, if you will. Additionally, Barbara decided to exile herself from her family by hiding out in TJ’s cabin. Overall, my favourite alternate name that still bears a similar meaning to Barbara.

• Literally any other name like Catherine (or Cathy for short), Eleanor, Jane, Madeleine, the list goes on. Anything but a name you choose when joking around with your friends and are imitating an old lady. Anything but Barbara!

(I am fully aware that I just wrote five paragraphs ranting about how much I dislike the name, Barbara. Thank you.)

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Edging With No Satisfying Release

Back to a more literary, less niche critique: the ending was disappointing. This book is definitely more about the journey than the destination. All the storylines, interwoven across nine different characters, are the beauty of the book. The joy of connecting the dots and discovering how each character is related to the others in one way or another was exhilarating. The God of the Woods is a fun read that makes you hyperfixate on everything (which I love in a mystery). But due to Moore’s plotting talents, my mind was starting to run wild with possible solutions to the whodunit.

Did the McLlenans kill off Bear to position their son Paul as the heir to the bank?

Was Bear’s grandfather a psychopathic murderer who pinned everything on Jacob Sluiter? Since it was mentioned that Sluiter never actually confessed to his crimes and kept denying them, I thought this route would be an interesting way to reinforce the theme that rich people often get away with most of their crimes. In contrast, people in the working class often take the fall.

Was Bear still alive and in hiding?

And what about Barbara?

Was she actually dating Paul McLlenan, a guy at least 10 years older than her?

Was she assaulted and later killed by Lee Towson, a kitchen hire at Camp Emerson who had served a prison sentence for statutory rape (Adult having sex with someone sixteen or under)?

Or was something inappropriate happening between Barbara and TJ every night when she snuck into her cabin?

The answers to all of those questions would be no.

Bear wasn’t murdered. He had been out rowing with his drunk mother, Alice, when a storm came in, the boat flipped, and he drowned, and as it turns out, Barbara is alive and well, planning to live an isolated life in TJ’s cabin until she’s eighteen years old (which is quite an idiotic plan if you ask me but oh well what do I know). To sum it up, the red herrings meant to deceive us were more interesting than what actually happened.

On the back cover, we got a quote from Glamour saying that this novel would be “a literary thriller that will leave you gasping for air”. In the end, the only one gasping for air was Bear.

We could have gotten a murder to secure wealth, or a plotline about the grooming of young children, but instead we got a drowning and a teenager who was serious about her “I’m going to run away” threats. Disappointing to say the least, with all the other possibilities that could have taken place. The reality of what had actually transpired was too tame for my tastes. Obviously, drowning is a horrible way to die, as well as abuse of any kind against minors, but this is fiction after all.

This book had me gripped. I spent hours reading and flipping pages until my hands started to cramp up. I lost sleep over this book; I avoided social interactions over this book, all in the hopes of a grand payoff that would have made it all worth it. And it didn’t. The payoff wasn’t payoffing. I would have liked a slightly more sinister explanation, a truly pearl-clutching plot twist, but alas, my pearl necklace remains fully intact.

I’m not saying I would’ve liked a The Girl in the Dragon Tattoo dark explanation with incest, grooming, rape and serial killers (that book was way too sinister, even for me and ruined my Christmas Eve. Yes, I actually thought it would be a good idea to finish reading that book on Christmas Eve. I am actually insane and in fact not okay). But can’t a girl have a middle ground? The Girl in the Dragon Tattoo is on the deepest, darkest end of the spectrum in a cave where you die a slow, painful death as a cannibal roasts you over the fire like a rotisserie chicken. Whereas, The God of the Woods is on the sunshine and rainbows end of it, where you’re riding on the back of a unicorn that isn’t quite your preferred bread, and is admittedly a bit stubborn, but alas, it’s still a unicorn. Can we please find a middle ground? Somewhere in the foggy mist at midnight, where something might be lurking in the unseen, ready to jump?

Final Body Count

Despite my dislike of the name Barbara and my somewhat psychopathic views on what I would’ve liked to happen to these minors, I ended up giving The God of the Woods a four-star rating on Goodreads. As already mentioned, it was more about the journey than about the destination. Despite the disappointment at the end, the journey was enjoyable. I don’t regret spending those hours in the sun by the pool, not giving a damn whether I would get sunburned and not wanting to get up to lather some on. I had been chained to my chair by this book. It seems I am in agreement with Mail on Sunday. This is a “gripping, [and] intricately plotted” read, and I don’t fault Taylor Swift for choosing to spend her precious few minutes of relaxation listening to this book. Definitely one of my favourites of the year so far!

xxxx Alegra