Scarlet Sun

The story of someone falling for a friend during a road trip had potential, but the writing is really sloppy and the characters are terrible. Every single sentence is, “I did this. Then I did that,” for the entire book, which was excruciating to read. The writing and emotions feel very YA but there is a really graphic sex scene, so I'm not sure who the target audience is, here. It all seems very fanficcy to me, not just because of the one bed situations that kept coming up and the constant overreactions to everything but because the characters really didn't have much differentiating them one from the other. There is a bizarre scene where the characters just straight up list their sexualities (including that of a friend who isn't present).

I had assumed from the summary that the friends would fall in love on the road trip, but instead the main character falls immediately before the trip and then treats the love interest horribly for the entire rest of the book. The constant push and pull of the two characters having sex and then April being like “oh that didn't matter” more than once made her read like a chaser (the love interest is trans) even though I don't think that was the intention. We're never really shown what the love interest sees in her.

There is a sort of bucket list element which could have been fun, but most of the list was checked off before the book started so nothing really comes of it.