REVIEW: You Between the Lines by Katie Naymon

In You Between the Lines by Katie Naymon, Leigh has had enough of her corporate career and has decided to become a poet. She applies to a prestigious poetry MFA program and gets in, only to discover her high school crush turned nemesis, William, is in the same program. Both decide to apply to a fellowship with Leigh’s favorite poet, but as the competition heats up, will that be the only thing heating up between them?

I struggled with this book for several reasons, the biggest one being Leigh. After having a poem critiqued negatively by Will in high school, she decided he wasn’t the man for her. Now, ten years later, she still harbors resentment over it. But she hasn’t learned from it, either. A large part of the MFA program seems to be sharing poems with their small group of classmates, and every time people try to give her helpful suggestions, she doesn’t listen. What she does instead is get an attitude and thinks that everyone hates her poems. She has no problem critiquing the poems of others, but when it comes to hers, she doesn’t want the feedback. Her behavior is often childish, and it was exhausting reading it.

Leigh also seems to have a problem with male poets. There are constant comments about how most popular poets are straight white males and she doesn’t like their works. It would be one thing if she said she didn’t like a particular poet, but she lumps all male poets together in a negative light. She honestly doesn’t seem to like men very much, which left me surprised that she wanted anything to do with Will, who is, of course, a straight, white male poet.

Leigh also likes to make everything about her, even those things that have nothing to do with her. For example, her parents were having trouble with their relationship, and she somehow manages to make it about her, her feelings, and that she’s somehow responsible for their issues. She has online sessions with a therapist, but they honestly seemed like a waste because she was still acting like this through most of the book.

Will, for his part, has his own issues he’s dealing with, but he’s much less annoying about it than Leigh was. Despite them now being closer to thirty, the back and forth between them was more high-schoolish than someone their age. It felt more like a YA book at times.

I wanted to like this book, but between Leigh’s behavior, attitude, and her poems–which weren’t particularly good–it was a real struggle to make it through to the end. I pushed myself to get through it, hoping it would get better, but it never really does.

Book Info:

Publication: February 18, 2024 | Forever |

A former sorority girl starts a prestigious poetry MFA program only to discover that one of her fellow grad students is her high school crush-turned-nemesis—​who can’t stop writing about her.

No one’s more surprised than Leigh when a prestigious MFA program in North Carolina accepts her. A former sorority girl, Leigh’s the first to admit she knows more about the lyrics of Taylor Swift than T.S. Eliot, and she’s never been able to shake the “all-style-no-substance” feedback her high school crush made in their poetry workshop. Bad enough that her tattooed, New Yorker tote bag-carrying classmates have read all the right authors and been published in the country’s leading literary journals, Leigh’s insecurities become all too real when Will, that same high school crush-turned-nemesis, shows up at orientation as a first-year in the program, too. And now, he’s William, exactly the kind of writer Leigh hates, complete with his pretentious sweater vests and tattered Moleskine.

Leigh’s determined to prove herself—and William—wrong by landing the program’s highly-coveted fellowship. But Will’s dead-set on it, too, and in a small cohort, they can’t keep apart for long. When Will submits an intimate poem (that’s maybe, probably, definitely about Leigh) to workshop, they’re both forced to realize there’s more to the other than what’s on the page. And what’s between the lines may be even more interesting.