Review: Dear Wendy by Ann Zhao (Spoiler-Free)

Disclaimer: I read this book while high on narcotics post-spinal surgery. Forgive me if some details escape my mind.

As you can tell by the disclaimer, this review is going to be shorter than usual which is a shame because I’ve been so excited to read and review this book for so long! But given the fact that I currently don’t have the physical capability to type on a laptop (#horizontalweek😎), I don’t think you can blame me.

I am so happy this book exists and for what it represents, but I felt like that was all it did. Exist. And on one hand that’s great, because stories like this don’t really exist in the current media landscape, but I couldn’t really find a STORY in this one at all. Of course, there were tons of conversations I appreciated (and an entire CHAPTER called “That One Scene in Little Women”. We all know the one.), but I couldn’t help but feel like that’s all this was.

I think I’m also slightly bitter and found myself bored because of how MUCH the characters were obsessed with college and their college specifically which I fully could not relate to and also caused their voices to sound incredibly juvenile? Which I hate hearing people use as a “complaint” for YA, but it honestly read a lot like middle-grade at times. I think the whole college obsession thing is a personal problem though, not the book’s fault. I’m sure some people would love it.

Anyway, I somehow both felt like this book was exclusively made up of conversations and yet didn’t actually dive deep enough into a lot of those conversations. But also it was sweet along the way?

This is probably the worst review I’ve ever written and that’s so unfair to this book, but hey that’s life.

3 stars and that’s considering I had a plastic drain ripped out of my body at the time of reading it, so it’s objectively probably more of a 3.5.