We’re officially in week two of Meaghan and Shirin’s “romance month,” and the mood is as chaotic and overheated as late August. This Fully-Booked: Literary podcast episode opens with both hosts lamenting the gross, sticky heat and Meaghan’s annual spiral into crankiness.
Seasonal rage aside, they’re ready to dig into romance adaptations, starting with the new Netflix drop My Oxford Year.
Spoiler: their excitement is quickly replaced by exasperation.
Meaghan had high hopes for this one, especially with the British actor Corey Mylchreest starring (yes, the same guy from Queen Charlotte). It had the makings of something juicy: Oxford setting, potential for classic British romance, and a lead she was already rooting for. But despite the aesthetic appeal, both hosts ended up disappointed.
Shirin confesses she hadn’t heard of the movie before Meaghan brought it up, but jumped in with the romantic optimism the genre calls for. Unfortunately, that optimism didn’t last long. The film quickly fell apart under the weight of its own awkwardness, and that’s what the rest of the episode is dedicated to unpacking.
Note
The following is an editorialized transcript of our weekly literary podcast. If you would like to listen to the podcast, click the play button above orlisten on your favorite platform with the links below.
A Wild Origin Story For A Wildly Mid Movie
Before jumping into the plot, Meaghan and Shirin try to piece together how My Oxford Year came to be. And it’s weird.
The story originated as a screenplay, not a book, written by Alison Burnett. Then Julia Whelan (audiobook narrator turned author) joined the writing team, and instead of finishing the script, she ended up writing a full novel. The book was published in 2018. Years later, they looped back around and made it into the Netflix movie.
According to Goodreads, the book didn’t stray far from the original screenplay, and apparently, neither did the film. There are a few differences, mainly names and the ending, but overall, it seems the bones of the story stayed the same.
The twist? It took 13 years to bring this whole thing to life, and yet the final product doesn’t exactly feel polished. Meaghan and Shirin are baffled. “Thirteen years?” they ask. “For this?”
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Where The Plot (Barely) Happens
The movie follows Anna De La Vega (played by Sofia Carson), a recent American graduate who gets into Oxford to study Victorian poetry. She defers a Goldman Sachs job offer to do so, and right off the bat, Shrin’s done. As someone with an English degree working in finance, she flat-out rejects the plausibility of Goldman Sachs waiting patiently for someone to go read Tennyson abroad. “Absolutely not,” she says. “That’s not how it works.”
Anyway, Anna arrives at Oxford, and instead of learning under a famous poetry professor, she’s bumped to a class taught by Jamie Davenport (Corey Mylchreest), a PhD student. He’s hot. Of course. Despite Meaghan’s extreme distaste for student-teacher romance dynamics. especially ones echoing Pretty Little Liars, both hosts admit the age gap here is small, and it’s not overtly creepy. Still, Shirin says she cringes a bit whenever these stories pop up.
Anna and Jamie fall into a will-they-won’t-they relationship. Surprise: they will.
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But Jamie keeps some emotional distance. Why? Because he’s dying. Specifically, he has a rare and incurable genetic cancer, the same one that killed his brother. Once Anna learns the truth, everything pivots. She cancels her job plans (again) and decides to stay in England to be with him.
And then the final third of the movie throws us into a whirlwind of illness, family conflict, and a weirdly rushed grief arc. There’s a montage that reveals Jamie’s dream of a romantic European getaway never happened, and he dies before they can go. But Anna takes the trip alone, and in the final scene, she’s seen teaching his old class, signaling that she’s picked up the torch, so to speak.
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There’s a lot that rubbed the hosts the wrong way. From the Goldman Sachs subplot that makes no sense, to the clunky writing that never quite finds a consistent tone, Meaghan and Shirin both felt like the movie wasted its own potential.
The Oxford setting could have been lush and romantic, but instead felt flat. The emotional twist wasn’t earned; it just kind of happens, and the characters aren’t developed enough for us to care deeply.
They also took issue with the supporting characters. Anna’s Oxford friends are quirky, yes, but not in a way that adds much. Instead, it feels like the film is trying to shove in some diversity of personality without actually giving the characters room to breathe. Meaghan says it almost feels like a pity friendship, which just feels weird and unearned.
The dialogue also got dinged. Both hosts admit to zoning out during entire sections. It’s not just that it’s boring, it’s that it sounds like a clumsy mash of romance tropes and pseudo-deep conversations. Arthur (Meaghan’s husband), who was half-listening in the background, even said it didn’t sound like a good movie based solely on the audio.
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Final Thoughts: We Didn’t Hate It, But We Wouldn’t Watch It Again
Despite all the complaints, Meaghan and Shirin aren’t completely without sympathy. They both admit that the chemistry between the leads is pretty good. “Honestly, that’s the only reason I made it to the end,” Shirin says. There are moments, particularly the imagined European vacation montage, where emotion lands.
And for a brief minute, you might even feel something.
They give it a solid 4 out of 10. Not good enough to recommend, but not offensive enough to hate entirely. “It’s fine,” they say more than once. “You won’t be mad you watched it, but you won’t remember it either.”
For fans of moody British romances and Sofia Carson’s intense soapboxing monologues (which she apparently does in every movie she stars in), this might scratch a specific itch. But if you’re looking for a compelling, grounded romance? Maybe skip this one.
The hosts promise they’ll be reviewing more romance adaptations this month, and hint that things are only going to get more dramatic from here. In their words: “We’ve made some bad decisions.” And honestly, we’re kind of excited to hear about them.
