Casey. CASEY. we need to talk about the emails.

Casey, hi, hello, you don't know me, we're basically friends now.

first of all: the emails. you knew exactly what you were doing with the emails. you put two idiots in an impossible situation and then had them quoting historical love letters at each other at three in the morning, and I read that section on a train with my entire face doing something embarrassing. the man opposite looked over. I did not care even slightly.

second: thank you for making it funny. I braced for earnest and got farce, and farce is so much harder to build, and you made it look like nothing at all. the cake!! opening on the cake was a choice and it was the correct one.

third, and I say this with love: the politics is a fairy tale and we both know it. you've built a version of the world where the worst available outcome is a bad news cycle, and there are stretches where I could feel the plot being held up under the elbows. also I do not believe a single one of those poll numbers, not one.

fourth: Nora deserved more. Nora deserved her own book, and if you've written one and I've somehow missed it I'm going to be furious with myself.

anyway. I read the whole thing in a day and a half and then went straight back to the start of the emails and did those again, which I have never done with anything, so whatever it is you did, it worked on me specifically and completely.

eight. it would be a nine if I believed any of it, and that's my problem rather than yours.

EDIT: Steph says you're not supposed to write to authors like they can hear you. she's wrong and I'm leaving it up.