Sleepless Over You

I watched him deliver a colt on Youtube! It was disgusting and beautiful!

I suppose this was a nice bedtime story to listen to for a few nights. My main issue with the book is that all the parts I liked had nothing to do with romance, and this is supposed to be a romance story. The romantic storyline honestly was ridiculous and kind of cringy. So much internet stalking on both sides, and pretty much actual stalking on Matt’s, and the entire thing with special fate connection was so contrived. It’s a retelling of Sleepless in Seattle, so it wasn’t unexpected that the story would be not so much about the relationship as about the two of them getting the courage to give it a try, but the specific way it was handled just didn’t work for me.

I did very much like Matt’s storyline that was independent from the romance. It felt a bit rushed because of the constraints of the length, no doubt, but there was a lot of promising stuff there. The relationships within the family in the aftermath of Matt’s parents’ divorce, his own obvious quarter-life crisis, sorting through all the components of his life trying to figure out what he needs, what he wants, and what he would rather do without—nothing revolutionary, but it sure had soul, and I wanted to keep digging into all those family situations. The whole storyline about getting unhealthily obsessed with some stranger online would have actually played really well into that… if only it got resolved differently. As in, with Matt figuring out that this whole thing isn’t super reasonable and maybe he should look for love in real life. That one red herring meet-cute from chapter 1 could have made a reappearance, idk.

Hugo’s storyline wasn’t as compelling for me, despite him being super nice and having an awesome relationship with his daughter and me generally being very into stories about overcoming grief. I think a lot of how it was handled was a bit too saccharine, although there was definite potential. Again though, it felt more like a self-contained story of a middle-aged man dealing with loneliness rather than half of a romance story. 

The book definitely gets extra points for the doggo. The Instagram-famous doggo was adorable, though I really disliked the way Matt treated him early on. Not even the whole “too many photosets and other obligations“ thing—that one was kind of understandable and more a comment on the capitalism of at all. But seriously, if your dog is displaying signs of indigestion and meteorism? You’re not being good to them by treating them to half of your ice cream! You should take them to a vet and see what kind of diet and potentially medication they need!