Romance
Everything about this novel is baked in irony. The plot, for instance, is based upon what has become a favorite trope in the romance novel genre. It is a representation of the curiously popular 21st-century concept of creating a fake romance to fool others. The ironic foundation being, of course, that what begins as a completely phony romance turns into real love by the end.
Friendship trope
The fake boyfriend/girlfriend plot has become exceedingly popular in the new millennium, but it need not necessarily start out star-crossed. In fact, more often than not, this plot device is engaged for the purpose of showing two people who have insisted upon a purely platonic friendship the errors of their ways in a narrative that ultimately makes them realize romance has been all predestined. In this particular instance, however, the irony of a fake romance turning into the real thing is given the additional layer of ironic circumstances in which two people who start out disliking each other altogether wind up in love.
Ironic Bonding
At one of the least expected moments in their evolving romance, Catalina and Aaron bond over a mutual love of Disney/Pixar animated films. Although not recognized as such by the characters themselves, there is an ironic gap in this scene. While intended to illuminate an unexpected common bond, adhesion does not seem reliably strong. Catalina forwards her love of movies like The Lion King and Up as something that touches her deeply, both emotionally and intellectually. In juxtaposition to this view, Aaron’s rationale for loving the same movies being that “they take my mind off things” seems ironically out-of-sync with the obvious purpose of the scene being to bring them closer together.
Social Media
A romance novel firmly taking place in the 21st-century world of the internet and social media revolving around the construction of a fake relationship that is curiously lacking in the actual use of the internet and social media for that purpose would be ironic enough. As previously stated, however, this is a novel completely baked in irony and that extends even beyond the story itself. Despite being shockingly light on the use of social media in the narrative, the impact of social media on the commercial success of the book is now semi-legendary. Almost every marketing and advertising material associated with the book descriptively feature it as a “TikTok sensation” in a reference to how that particular social media platform was instrumental in creating viral interest which ultimately landed the book on mainstream best-seller lists.