The Comfort Character Blueprint
For a reader who practically lives in bookland, I am painfully behind on turning my thoughts into actual reviews. But if there is one theme defining my recent reading stack, it is that I am firmly in my “new-to-me author era.” Everything capturing my attention lately has come from authors I’m reading for the very first time, and 72 Hours of You by Schramm proved to be another fantastic discovery.
Initially, Sydney gave me serious pause. It wasn’t the blunt teenage humor or the colorful vocabulary—it was the creeping fear that she was being framed as a walking trope. But Schramm plays the long game here: as Sydney’s front drops, that perceived caricature gives way to a surprisingly nuanced voice.
The central twist didn’t pull the rug out from under me—I called it early—but the fallout is where the novel genuinely shines. Enter Peter, who is essentially the blueprint for comfort characters. The dynamic between him and Sydney elevates the entire book, morphing what could have been standard YA angst into a quiet, profound meditation on mortality. When Peter quips about wanting to exist in a slice-of-life story, it hits home because that exact genre-blurring intimacy is where the novel’s heart truly lies.
Where the book stumbles is in its endgame mechanics. The final quarter hits the gas at the precise moment it should have coasted, rushing through a climax that deserved more emotional room to breathe. Shift that turning point ten chapters earlier, and the gravity of their journey would have landed twice as hard.
