A lonely twenty-three-year-old finds a sentient blob behind a bar and decides to turn it into her perfect boyfriend. Obviously I was going to read this. Blob is weird, funny, sad, and has such a ridiculously good premise that I really thought I was about to become obsessed with it. Instead, I liked it. I just kept wishing it would get a little stranger.

Vi is kind of a disaster. She's dropped out of college, hates her job, can't get over her ex, and feels like everyone around her is moving forward while she's completely stuck. Then she finds a little blob creature in an alley, takes it home, names it Bob, and discovers that she can basically teach it how to become whatever she wants.

Naturally, she makes herself a boyfriend.

I LOVED the idea behind this. Vi isn't just creating an attractive man. She's building someone who will behave exactly the way she thinks a partner should. She teaches Bob what to watch, how to act, what to say, and eventually what kind of person to become. The whole thing becomes this really interesting look at how much of love is actually loving another person versus loving the version of them we've created in our heads.

Vi being biracial also adds another layer to what her "perfect" man looks like and where those preferences came from. Her relationships, family, childhood, and experiences feeling out of place all feed into the person she tries to create.

My biggest problem is that I wanted more blob.

For such an absurd premise, the book ends up being surprisingly grounded. A lot of the story is about Vi's loneliness, identity, relationships, and memories, while Bob sometimes feels more like the device being used to explore those things. None of that is bad, but every time the book started leaning into the bizarre possibilities of a woman literally molding a sentient creature into her boyfriend, I wanted it to push further.

I think I went in expecting something much weirder and messier than what the book actually wanted to be.

Still, there is something really charming about it. Vi is frustrating and selfish and deeply lonely, but that's also what makes her interesting. She doesn't magically know how to love someone just because she can manufacture the perfect partner. If anything, Bob exposes how complicated her relationship with love already was.