Personally I thought they found a balance pretty well. It was a bit of an emotional rollercoaster at times but all of the serious parts had little hints / foreshadowing leading up to them so they weren’t much of a shock. (Though still well depicted IMO).
Spoiler Maybe I felt that the slight bit of happiness at the very end with the smiling ect wasn’t enough to cover the sadder bits that were just discussed, which worries me a bit for S3, having not read the books yet. What are your thoughts?
I also thought that it was done very well and felt balanced overall.
Slight spoiler about the general direction of the books: I always appreciated how Alice Oseman manages to not only include serious topics and problems many teenagers face (some more specific to LGBTQ+ teens, some general) but also present ways to deal with them in a healthy way. Not just “and then all the problems were resolved and everyone was happy again”, but how to deal with the problems in the long run. I think it’s a good message that it’s normal and okay to be affected by bad experiences for some time.
