Dove and Avan are hot, the twists are wild, but is it actually good?

Listen, the second I saw Dove Cameron and Avan Jogia were doing an erotic thriller together, I was in. Like fully committed before I even knew what it was about.

Two of my favorite Disney and Nick stars? Playing lovers who may murder each other during the COVID lockdown? Take all my money, Prime Video.

I’d already read the book, so I thought I knew what to expect.

Spoiler: the show goes completely off the rails in ways I wasn’t ready for.

TMJ Rating: 🍿🍿🍿/5

So, What Happens?

Ciara (Dove) and Oliver (Avan) meet right before lockdown hits and decide to quarantine together after like three dates. Which is already insane behavior, but whatever, we were all losing our minds in 2020.

The show jumps between their steamy early days and the present, where someone’s decomposed body is chilling in a bathtub, and the cops are trying to figure out what the hell happened. Both of them are hiding secrets, using fake names, and clearly lying through their teeth.

I binged all six episodes alone in one night and genuinely could not look away.

The Good Shit in 56 Days

Dove and Avan’s chemistry is fucking electric. I’ve loved them both since their Disney and Nick days, and watching them play adults in genuinely sexy scenes felt like a fever dream in the best way.

They commit hard to the steamy stuff without making it feel awkward or performative. Their early flirting feels real and fun, which makes the darker turns actually land because you believe they’re into each other.

Dove plays Ciara with this perfect mix of vulnerable and calculating. You can see her wheels turning behind every conversation, trying to figure out if Oliver’s trustworthy while hiding her own massive secrets.

Avan nails the charming, but vaguely threatening energy Oliver needs. He’s hot and sweet one minute, then says something that makes your skin crawl the next.

The lockdown setting works so well for building paranoia. Being trapped in an apartment with someone you barely know, questioning every story they tell, noticing weird inconsistencies, but having nowhere to go? That claustrophobic dread permeates everything.

The show captures how suffocating that isolation felt, and uses it to ratchet up tension constantly.

The dual timeline structure kept me hooked. Watching their relationship develop while knowing someone ends up dead made me analyze every interaction like I was solving a true crime case. I kept pausing to text theories to myself because I was convinced I’d figured it out (I had not).

Some of the twists genuinely surprised me, even having read the book. The show makes different choices with the ending that I have feelings about, but in the moment, they’re shocking and wild.

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Where It Falls Apart

The pacing drags hard in the middle. Episodes three and four felt twice as long as they actually were because the show lingers on scenes that don’t need that much time. I get wanting to build tension, but sometimes you’re just watching people stare at each other suspiciously for way too long.

The supporting characters are basically cardboard cutouts. The detectives investigating feel like they wandered in from a completely different, more boring show.

Ciara and Oliver’s friends exist purely to deliver exposition and then disappear. Nobody outside the main two feels like an actual person.

The investigation stuff is weak as hell. The cops ask the most obvious questions and follow the most predictable leads. There’s no clever detective work or interesting police procedure. They just kinda stumble around until the plot decides to reveal something.

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Book vs. Show Real Talk

Okay, so I need to address this: the book is better. Catherine Ryan Howard’s novel has this unreliable narration that makes you question literally everything.

The psychological depth, the way she plants clues, the slow-burn dread? The show simplifies all of that to make it more digestible, which I get, but it loses the mind-fuck quality that made the book so good.

The ending is completely different, and honestly? The book’s version hits way harder. The show’s finale is bold and shocking, but it doesn’t feel as earned or psychologically complex.

If you’ve read the novel, you’ll probably have mixed feelings. If you haven’t, you’ll be fine with how it wraps up.

My Final Verdict

56 Days is a fun, steamy mess that I enjoyed way more than I probably should have.

Dove and Avan are phenomenal and clearly having a blast playing these unhinged characters. The lockdown setting feels fresh for an erotic thriller, and the mystery kept me guessing even when I could see certain twists coming.

Is it perfect? Absolutely not. The pacing’s uneven, the side characters are forgettable, and the book does everything better. But did I have a good time watching two of my favorite actors be hot and suspicious for six episodes? Hell yes, I did!

It’s worth watching for Dove and Avan’s chemistry alone. It’s sexy, twisty, and bingeable even when it’s messy. Read the book if you want the full psychological experience, but the show’s a solid weekend watch.

Would you ever quarantine with someone you’d known for three days? Because I absolutely would not, and this show proves why.