2017
WISE Score
Amazon
A sharp, slightly cold, and very messy look at what happens when two college students start tangling with a married couple.
4.0
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Sally Rooney is the queen of the 'sad girl' aesthetic for a reason. This isn't a beach read where everyone ends up happy; it’s a clinical dissection of how people hurt each other while trying to be 'modern.'
If your teen is into literary fiction or wants to feel like they’re reading something 'grown-up,' this is the gold standard. Just know that it deals with infidelity and self-harm head-on. It’s not 'brain rot,' but it is definitely emotionally heavy lifting.
16 and up. This is adult fiction through and through. Younger teens will likely find the lack of quotation marks annoying and the existential dread over Dublin rent prices totally unrelatable.
The story centers on an extramarital affair and characters who are often intentionally detached or emotionally cold to one another. It's not 'bad,' but it's the opposite of cozy.
Rooney's prose style—stripping away quotation marks and focusing on internal rhythms—is distinct and fresh, even if the Dublin setting is grounded in reality.
Contains explicit sexual content, infidelity, and depictions of self-harm. While 'safe' for an adult reader, it's not something you want a middle-schooler stumbling into without a heads-up.
It offers a masterclass in modern power dynamics, class anxiety, and the realities of living with a chronic illness like endometriosis.
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