Lovers of Rooney’s book know that Marianne and Connell’s relationship goes well beyond what happens between their sheets. The couple is juggling coming-of-age and working through their individual issues — messy, emotional, tortuous issues —together as well as on their own. The book does an incredible job of getting to the nuance of first love and finding your place in the world. “It wasn’t the topless shots that made me glad not to be watching with my parents," wrote Refinery29’s Gwendolyn Smith in her review of Normal People . "It was the show’s focus on the emotions and behaviours adjacent to sex — the laughter, the tenderness, the white-hot desire — that felt the most radical."