Romance • 2026
Into the Blue
By Emma Brodie • ★★★
This book quickly rose to TikTok popularity, so I went in with high hopes. And while it was enjoyable, I came out feeling a little fooled. The story didn’t need to be 400+ pages long, and a lot of that padding comes from a subplot I actually should have loved: TV and theatre.
I’m a theatre nerd and work in film and TV, so on paper that’s my world — but instead of enriching the story, it slowed it down. We didn’t need 100 pages of scripting and performance. It fueled the plot, but it overstayed its welcome.
Noah, the male lead, was hard to like, and I never fully bought into his relationship with AJ. It felt less like a slow-burn romance and more like a college one-night stand where you lie awake imagining a future that probably won’t happen — scenarios of falling in love and being together forever. When they finally do get together, it felt too easy. Like the book did the work around the relationship without doing the work inside it.
One smaller thing that genuinely tripped me up throughout: AJ’s nickname is “Age,” and every time she was the subject of a sentence, I lost the thread for a moment. A minor thing, but it added up.
Overall, I pushed through and I’m glad I did — it’s not a bad book. I just won’t remember it in a few weeks. I can see exactly why it took off on TikTok, and I can see why certain readers will love it. I was just not one of them.
Into the Blue by Emma Brodie. 📌 This post contains affiliate links. I may earn a small commission at no cost to you.
Marin Robinson 
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