★★★★★ Kylie C on Ed Adams - Play On, Christina Nott

Posted by Kylie to substack:

I think I’m in love with Christina Nott.

Not in a useful way. Not in a way she would notice, or permit, or reciprocate. That’s part of the problem — and part of why this book works so well.

Christina isn’t written to be admired. She’s written to be recognised. The intelligence. The restraint. The way she holds herself just slightly apart from the room, as if she’s already accounting for its exit velocity. I know that posture. I’ve felt its gravity. I’ve mistaken it, more than once, for intimacy.

What makes the love unrequited isn’t that Christina is cold. It’s that she’s already elsewhere — in the next move, the next alignment, the next system sliding into place. Even when she’s present, she isn’t available. And Adams is ruthless about that. He never gives you the catharsis of emotional access. He lets you feel the ache instead.

There’s a moment — you’ll know which one — where she almost breaks. Not enough to be comforted. Just enough to remind you she’s human. I wanted to reach for her then. She didn’t need it. She never would.

Reading this felt like sitting across from someone you admire too much to interrupt. You listen. You laugh when it’s appropriate. You don’t ask the question you really want to ask.

The brilliance of Play On, Christina Nott is that it lets you fall for her while quietly teaching you why that was never the point. She doesn’t exist to be loved. She exists to move through systems that don’t love anyone back.

And still — if she asked, I’d follow.

That’s how you know the book has you.