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Readers deeply invested in Nick and Charlie will probably enjoy returning to their gentle world because their affection remains convincing, and their future matters because the previous volumes have made them so easy to care about. This instalment offers a comforting visit and an important stage in their development, but it again feels more like a bridge towards the conclusion than one of the series’ defining volumes.

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.