In 2019, YouTube vlogger Haley Pham posted a video recapping her vacation to Greece with her boyfriend and fellow YouTuber Ryan Trahan, titled “How I lost $10,000 and caught a rare disease STORYTIME.” 

Then 18 and 21 years old respectively, Pham and Trahan seemed to be patron saints of the contemporary American dream: young, successful influencers who were in love and traveling the world. Pham’s recap video, however, would soon turn her followers against her, owing to her laundry list of complaints and perceived ungratefulness regarding the trip. 

Her faux pas concludes with her highly discouraging her viewers from traveling to Greece, citing the country’s economic struggles, lack of exciting activities and disappointing vistas that turned out not to be “as pretty as the Instagram bloggers [made] it seem.”

In the summer of 2021, when BookTok was in vogue, “BookTube,” the YouTube equivalent, gave Pham’s channel a revival, and it seemed inevitable that her renewed success in the internet reading niche would culminate in the release of her own novel. 

Two years after she began documenting her writing journey, Pham released “Just Friends” on March 3. 

The novel follows a Vietnamese bookworm, Blair, navigating friendship, a lost first love and new beginnings in the picturesque, fictional coastal town of Seabrook, California. Though she initially returns to spend time with her dying aunt Lottie, she eventually falls for Declan, the broad-shouldered, universally beloved golden-boy trope who has plagued young adult romance fiction since the dawn of time. 

Along the way, Blair becomes both a millionaire and an author. The autobiographical allusions couldn’t be less subtle, and readers acquainted with Pham’s online persona will read these parallels as an attempt to vindicate her whirlwind romance with Trahan, often criticised for its naïve outlook on marriage and their extravagant spending on property ownership. 

Despite such personally and emotionally resonant themes, it’s a shame that the book can’t quite decide whether it wants to be a story about grief and growth or a fantasy about how everything works out perfectly in the end. 

The romance, which should be the engine for powerful narrative momentum, instead runs on fumes. Declan’s personality is largely constructed from trauma, a poor attempt to humanize his near-mythic, Superman-caliber attributes: a former three-time state champion quarterback who is nerdy, impossibly kind, patient and loving to a fault. 

Alas, Declan is relegated to the same narrative purgatory as many a Superman story, because people with no flaws are boring to read about.

The rest of the cast and plot fare similarly, featuring a protagonist whose only shortcoming is being too kind and selfless, a cartoonishly meddling future mother-in-law and a mother who cheers on the couple through their trials and tribulations. The central conflict hinges on a miscommunication so easily resolved that its prolonged existence strains the book’s credulity. 

The flame between Blair and Declan never catches; the structural integrity of the manic-pixie-meets-jock relationship remains flimsy, relying so heavily on the archetypes that it edges into parody. 

Even more frustratingly, Calvin, a secondary character, is dangled briefly as a potential rival and participant in a love triangle, before disappearing entirely from the narrative — a missed opportunity to develop some desperately needed tension. 

Then there is the prose itself, which betrays an author who hasn’t yet learned to trust her own natural voice, with Pham frequently using unnaturally polysyllabic wording in favor of simpler and more efficient descriptions.  

The similes are frequently questionable, such as when Pham describes the appearance of Declan’s cafe: “It’s as if Dr. Seuss and Einstein collaborated on a coffee shop in a wealthy town.” Such prose doesn’t just interrupt the narrative flow — it actively stalls the emotional rhythm by confusing the reader’s imagination and breaking their immersion.

The editing, too, required more attention: “a skip and a hop away” instead of the idiom’s correct order; “milk shake” as two words; inconsistent naming — sometimes “Ernst & Young,” other times “Ernst and Young” — and erroneous naming of the band as “the Cars,” as opposed to “The Cars.” Collectively, it signals a book being rushed to publication or a lack of care shown to the craft. 

When Pham quits trying to be poetic, however, the writing genuinely sings. Her descriptions of grief and love feel lived-in and specific in ways that demonstrate true authenticity and vulnerability. 

“Pulling into the smooth cobblestone driveway of Aunt Lottie’s house feels like exhaling,” she writes. She captures the physical burden of heartbreak: “I’m left sitting on my bed, ten pounds heavier with this new information.” She describes the shock of discovering her aunt’s diagnosis as “the [call] that creates a before and after in your story, bookending each side.”

These moments provide a glimpse into a more personal book about what it means to grieve and love through different stages of your life, from adolescence to adulthood. 

Ultimately, “Just Friends” is not a bad book. It is, at its core, a sincere one. But Pham’s most powerful prose emerges in spite of, not because of, the genre scaffolding she erects around it. 

The version of the book that leans fully into the emotions of reconnecting with a first love, of grieving a loved one, of growing up in an old town full of new memories, of the bittersweetness of becoming someone new — that book would be something truly special. 

For now, “Just Friends” is just alright. Somewhere inside is a different book — unconventional, yes, but likely better — and it’s waiting for the author to give it a chance.