I spent the first 100 pages of this book thinking "This is not for me." and only keeping on because I wanted to know what happens plot-wise before I start Eliza's story. "The boy next story" starts out with a lot of tropes that I (except for a few exceptions) don't like: The crush on the elder sibling's best friend, the crush on a boy (or girl) who is very obviously and outspoken interested in someone else, the intense jealousy towards her sister, a vague class picking on the protagonist for jealous reasons, a guy that can't accept that a friend is not into him. But once Rory started to be less obsessed with Toby, she patched up things with Merri and Clara and she met Huck, that's when I started to enjoy this story a lot more. I still didn't enjoy the romance quite as much because I got so annoyed with Toby sometimes, and a childhood crush on a (best) friend who's into someone else always makes me want the protagonist to find someone new to fall in love with. But in the end this story is mostly about Rory herself and her relationship to her sisters, and I liked that part of the story very much, as well as Rory's friendship with Huck. I think not having read [b:Little Women|1934|Little Women|Louisa May Alcott|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1562690475l/1934._SY75_.jpg|3244642] yet, actually added to my experience of this book because, in contrast to [b:A Date with Darcy|35888335|A Date with Darcy (Bookish Boyfriends, #1)|Tiffany Schmidt|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1519608635l/35888335._SX50_.jpg|56284342] where I could identify every line of dialogue and scene lifted from [b:Pride and Prejudice|1885|Pride and Prejudice|Jane Austen|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1320399351l/1885._SY75_.jpg|3060926] immediately, I had no frame of reference here and therefore was not taken out of the book by those realizations. There's only one scene early on that I know has to be lifted from Little Women because it feels out of character for Toby to say at that point. But as it happens in the first 100 pages of this book, that I, as mentioned before, didn't enjoy anyway, it's not the reason it took me so long to get through the book. All in all, even if I didn't like the romance of this book all that much, I did enjoy reading about Rory's journey and the development she went through, as well as knowing more about her character.