#idk if there's a tag that won't get all mixed in with tswift stuff but yknow

[stillgeekingout]

thoughts on reputation by lex croucher

first my non-spoilery thoughts (mostly non-spoilery. light spoilers for tone and general content): this book was so good and also SO STRESSFUL. haha. if you’re going into it expecting a light read, this isn’t it, but it’s incredibly funny (like seriously so so funny, there was probably at least one phrase or sentence on every page that gave me a little chuckle inside) and has a lot of really important things to say. and the stress does pay off for a very cathartic ending. you’re gonna suffer, but you’re gonna be happy about it etc.

honestly the two things I care the most about in books these days are if they’re funny and if they have characters that I care about. this supremely delivered on both counts. I really loved every single one of the characters (I mean, except the ones you’re supposed to hate, obviously. it does a very good job making you hate them). the third thing I care about is friendship narratives and hoo boy was there a lot of that too.

it gets compared to bridgerton a lot and I haven’t seen bridgerton, so I can’t speak to that, but I don’t think I would like bridgerton based on what I’ve heard of it and I really liked this. make of that what you will, I guess. it also gets compared to mean girls a lot and I think that’s very accurate, if mean girls as a narrative was kinder to its characters (including the plastics) and actually let characters be gay in a nuanced way. and if mean girls did a better job developing the love interest so we care about him and the romance part of the plot. similar to mean girls, if you’re going to be really bothered by secondhand embarrassment, this might not be the book for you. it’s not quite as pronounced but it is there, and I did squirm through a few scenes. this didn’t subtract from my enjoyment but it might for some people. The other content warnings are here for anyone who wants to know what I mean by heavy material: https://www.lexcroucher.co.uk/reputation-cw

Now time for my spoiler-filled thoughts under the cut!!

So I knew going into this that it would be too much drugs and alcohol content for me, a known prude, but that being said I thought it was handled really well and I liked that the narrative had things to say about doing things in excess / requiring that stuff to be able to have fun. and thomas’s whole thing was really thoughtfully handled.

Georgiana cracked me up the whole time with her naivety. I do think part of the embarrassment of this book for me was how much she reminded me of my younger clueless self, being inexperienced in everything and scandalized by everything. I also reeeeally related to the whole “this person is friend-shaped, be my friend be my friend be my friend”-ness of her. And I’m always a sucker for a “female character is very flawed and honestly kinda shitty to her friends but learns to be a better person over the course of the narrative” story.

I LOVE BETTY. I call being #1 betty walters fan. I get crazy when I latch onto a character, all I do is wait for them to make a next appearance and scream about it when they do. But anyway I just want to say that I loved betty from her first scene and I’m so glad george finally caught on. I was initially scared that it was going to go more the route of like, george is mean to betty in the climax and then realizes she has to apologize because she feels bad for her, but the fact that they became actual genuine close friends on top of that made me very very happy. No matter what else I say please know betty was my absoluuute favorite character, I’m obsessed with her, I would die for her, etc.

This book honestly just kept subverting what I thought was going to happen. I did not see the end coming at all, particularly with the way the jeremiah plot went. It reminded me a lot of Oklahoma (the musical) and a lot of… real life lol. but yeah it was v good and I’m proud of george.

I really did not expect to get very attached to thomas. Usually when a book is a friendship book with romance also in there, I get very very wrapped up in the friendship parts and then only sort of care about the romantic lead. And it did start that way when george was initially obsessing over him, I kept just kind of being like “ok he’s here, sure”. But lex gave us a kindhearted emotions boy, which is honestly the best kind of boy, and he plays piano and his dad is nice and he keeps george in check about being a kind friend? Heck yeah. The LETTERS?? YES. listen my favorite book is ella enchanted and ever since then, any romance that involves witty written correspondence is automatically in my good books. also he has the benedick energy of like, unquestionably supporting women over his sketchy friends and that’s Always good.

I loved each of the friends in different ways, and I am a little sad that we didn’t get much closure on Cecily and Jonathan in particular, but I do understand why it ended the way that it did and I appreciate Georgiana realizing that these were never really going to be her People. That’s a really cool thing that I don’t see a lot in stories. Usually either they make friends for life, or it turns out that the group were Bad People and that’s why they go their separate ways. So the fact that it was like “no, I think they are good people and I care for them deeply, but our ways of life are just never going to be compatible in the long run so I’m just going to appreciate them in my periphery from now on” was a really nuanced take and something that I think is truer to reality.

Let’s Talk About Frances. Frances intrigued the hell out of me because I never knew what the heck she was going to do next. I do always love a bitchy woman with secret emotions and after the first vulnerable sleepover scene, in my mind I already felt like I knew where frances’s arc might be going. But lord I did NOT! It’s really really interesting to have a book that follows so many tropes of other stories but at the same time goes in completely different directions. I would’ve read a whole bunch more about frances and her emotions and her parents and her trauma, and I really hope jane is helping her heal from all that and also be less of a jerk to everyone, and if anyone is writing the “jane and frances heal from trauma and become better people together” fic I am soooo there. I’m glad we at least got the confirmation that she believes george, that she got the satisfaction of telling off jeremiah, that she’s living with jane, and that her parents have separated at least for the time being. But yeah I think in a lesser book, frances would’ve been reduced to like “the regina george” and not necessarily given all the nuances that she had, and I really appreciated how much she felt like a rounded-out person with a lot of her own shit going on. I am sad that she and george had to end the way they did, but again, it makes sense for the narrative and I’m glad they’re at least on good enough terms that she’s going to go to the wedding.

I do think there were some things that were left loose (george bringing up donating to the poor was never addressed again, frances’s parents are barely addressed again which surprised me after the mrs. walters bit, etc) but now that I’m finished with it and not waiting for certain loose ends to be tied, I think that’s kind of the point. that sometimes things just end without closure. sometimes you just move on from people and you don’t get to change them in the way you wanted to.

I probably have a bunch more to say but the main thing is that every single character in this book felt extremely three dimensional to me, and that is a Really hard thing to pull off and it has made me even more excited to read all of lex’s future books. Came for the humor, stayed for the insanely well-developed characters.