The Friend Zone Experiment by Zen Cho. Never has a book had such an inappropriate name. Like, I actively hate this name and how little it has to do with the book. This was not a fluffy romcom as the name and cover implies, though it also wasn't grittily realistic either.

The title and cover are so misleading! I think it should have been marketed as women's fiction or adjacent, because a lot of ppl seem to assume it'll be a romcom tonally when it's actually a lot darker and more serious than that. Not my favorite Zen Cho (that's Black Water Sister), but it's solid and deserved better than its marketing imo.