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Moving on in the series, volume four takes us beyond Nick and Charlie's nervous exchanges and affection into much more complicated territory.

Alice Oseman sends the boys and their friends to Paris for a school trip filled with sightseeing, birthday celebrations, romantic tension and very little privacy. It's an ideal setting for a young romance, and it's also the place where the problems they've been quietly carrying become harder to hide.

At the same time, Nick and Charlie begin navigating their first relationship through private kisses, nervous text messages, a birthday celebration and a day at the beach. Their happiness is genuine, but so is the pressure created by secrecy. Nick wants to be with Charlie but remains terrified of being seen, especially by the rugby players with whom he's spent much of his school life.

Adjusting to that form took me a little time, but Alice Oseman made the transition remarkably easy. Nick Nelson and Charlie Spring are immediately likeable, their developing friendship is genuinely lovely, and the nervous uncertainty of first love is captured through small gestures that feel completely disproportionate only until we remember what it was like to experience them ourselves.