I used to write fanfiction, I used to read fanfiction, I used to love fanfiction. Sophie Gonzales‘ novel The Perfect Guy Doesn’t Exist does not only scream fanfiction – writing fanfiction is an integral part of the plot. So when I found this book at the bookstore and read the blurb, I had to buy it immediately. I didn’t regret it.
The plot
Ivy Winslow is a teenage girl with basically one big love: A TV series called „Hot, magical and deadly“ – or short H-MAD. Together with her best friend Henry, she’s deep in the fandom – so deep that she writes fanfiction about the series‘ main character Weston and publishes it online.
When her parents leave her alone at home for a week to go on a business trip, Ivy is very excited at first – and very worried during her very first night alone. She’s so worried and lonely that she wishes deeply for her favourite character to be with her to comfort her. Be careful what you wish for, though: When Ivy wakes up the next morning, she’s no longer alone. She wakes up next to Weston. A very real, but very glitchy version of her favourite fictional character.
Chaos enfolds when her, Henry, and her former best friend and now enemy, Mack, try to hide Ivy’s little secret while dealing with Weston’s quickly changing personality and trying to sort out things between the three of them. An entertaining rom-com full of fanfiction.
The characters
Our cast is fairly diverse. First of all we have Ivy, the main character of the book. She’s a teenage girl who discovered her bisexuality and while being very attracted to the fictional Weston, she’s also (still) crushing hard on her very real former best friend Mack. The book is narrated from a third person limited perspective focusing on Ivy and her point of view. Ivy’s more or less a loner. After she and Mack parted ways, Ivy was left with only one close friend, Henry.
Mack, which is a short form of Mackenzie, used to be Ivy’s best friend. She lives across the street with her parents and her older brother, who used to be like a second family for Ivy. In contrast to Ivy, Mack is fairly popular and since she’s the captain of the school’s volleyball team, she’s well integrated. Mack came out as lesbian to Ivy already before Ivy realized her own bisexuality and since Ivy was always very attached to Mack, she was worried it might come across as her copying Mack. She used to be Ivy’s love interest, but never really seemed to feel the same for her (former) best friend.
Henry is portrayed as a sweet, popular guy, despite being a nerd. A lot of girls at school seem to have a crush on him – but as an aro ace, Henry’s not very interested. He’s as much into H-MAD as Ivy, which is their connecting point. The beginning of their friendship more or less coincides with the fallout between Ivy and Mack, which makes him and Mack have a strong antipathy towards each other.
Last but not least, there’s Weston, who is basically a fictional character without much consistency. The reason is hidden behind a little spoiler warning:
More on Weston (Spoiler alert)
Weston’s character does not align to how he’s portrayed in the TV series, but is inspired by the fanfictions Ivy wrote and published about him. His personality changes on a daily basis according to the tropes she used in her stories. Overall, Weston is very protective over Ivy and very determined to do anything that is necessary to make their relationship work, which is basically a main source of entertainment of the book. Weston is unpredictable, an infatuated dumbass and just plain hilarious most of the time.
My overall opinion
Generally speaking, I liked the book. Sophie Gonzales‘ writing is light-hearted, catchy and fun to read. I found the book highly entertaining and especially as a former fanfiction author and reader, I laughed my ass off. Whenever there were fanfiction parts written by Ivy, Gonzales made sure to use a lot of stereotypical fanfiction phrases (like glowing orbs and released a breath she didn’t know she was holding and the like) and included linguistic errors to make Ivy’s writing more convincing as that of an average teenage girl. Ivy’s stories were also very stereotypical self-insert stories every member of a fandom is familiar with. Yet, the book does not at all feel like it’s making fun of fanfiction and fanfiction authors. It’s rather a slightly unhinged praise to fanfiction that makes you giggle.
The story is switching between two different timelines chapter by chapter: Half of it is set in the present time, the other half looks back at Ivy’s and Mack’s friendship and how it ended.
More the past snippets (Spoiler alert)
During these snippets the reader also discovers Ivy’s inspiration for her fanfiction and the tropes used and it becomes very obvious at this point that Weston is just a stand-in for Mack.
The characters are entertaining and convincing for their age, yet I personally have to admit that still, several weeks after finishing this book, I still can’t bring myself to like Mack. There are reasons given for why she acted the way she did, but to me personally both her excuses as well as the explanations offered by the author seemed shallow at best. Actually I almost tossed the book at the wall and threw a little tantrum when her and Ivy finally had a conversation about what went down between them.
More on that conversation and the reason why it made me angry (Spoiler alert)
What I didn’t like about this conversation was how Mack kept putting all the blame on Ivy without offering an excuse. It’s obvious that a third person limited narrator is not reliable as the reader only gets to see Ivy’s perspective of the whole thing. Yet, as someone who knows Ivy’s situation as a loner with almost no friends all too well, I personally think that Mack doesn’t come across as a good friend at all and doesn’t even notice. To me, Mack is lacking understanding for the situation of her „best friend“, who has no friends but Mack, only joins the volleyball team to be able to spend more time with Mack and then only makes a new friend due to the reason that while Ivy does a lot of activities she hates only to be with Mack, Mack can’t even PRETEND to like the thing Ivy adores. And when Ivy finally finds someone who likes it as much as she does, Mack gets jealous and turns into a salty bitch. Come on? And Ivy takes it. IVY TAKES IT. After their conversation, Ivy fully believes that she was the only one who was unfair and who should’ve been more understanding concering Mack’s difficult situation as the black girl who wants to become the volleyball captain (while volleyball is a very white sport). But where on earth is Mack’s understanding for her „best friend“ who has no one but her, is being stood up so that Mack can spend time with the volleyball girls and then is not even allowed to have another friend who shares her interest? Also, the way Mack talks about Henry just because she’s jealous is also very „mean girl“. There’s a teeny-tiny sort of apology from Mack’s side at the very very end of the book, but still. Even that is shallow. For the majority of the book, I absolutely couldn’t stand her.
So all in all, I really liked the book. It was entertaining, I laughed a lot and I had a fun time reading it. Yet, this one thing about Mack hurt me on a very personal level and just made me … rage.