You make your point well, but I disagree. How does it make sense for her to keep it together after a totally dissapointing birthday party?. I would argue that her not even being able to make it happen at all is worse that happening and going badly for her relationship with Wade. I still think that it would have been perfectly in character if Ian asked her after coming back from the fair how things went and offered to go just the two of them (or with others like Jeremy or Emma) whenever. You can not write the same Cindy (because it's not a case of Lena on being a different character on different paths according to your choices) reacting to you going to the book fair very negatively and also reacting quite surprised if you refused such an important opportunity for you to go to a birthday party. It's game logic not "real" character logic.It's not really a matter of what's acceptable, though. Ian/Cindy catalyst is the perfect storm of Cindy's world falling apart when her attempt to bring some spark in her relationship with Wade and something she's been looking forward to goes completely sideways, and Ian --who's potentially been her support for a good while now-- actually being there for her, unlike literally everyone else, her boyfriend included.
Ian attending the book fair isn't something Cindy would resent too much, but it'd simply mean this particular moment never happens, and without it Cindy would probably keep it together afterwards, when she's no longer so vulnerable.
I don't consider it bad writing, to take such factors into account.
I still think that if Eva wanted to force a split between two paths it would have made much more sense to use Alison's trip. Less unreasonable for Cindy to get so angry and more useful to limit branching when you split two LI's paths of the same group of friends. Alternatively, if you want to make Cindy the unreasonable, entitled bitch that some people think she is, you can make her take for granted that of course you'd go to her party instead of the book fair, instead of acting (reasonably) surprised.
And it's not only Cindy or Holly the problem with how Eva implemented that. Somehow Ian also seems to forget completely about his attraction to them, ian_go_holly and ian_go_cindy are not used ever again (so far). And neither Ian/Cindy or Ian/Holly are sudden things that happen out of nowhere because of a special moment as catalyst. Their mutual attraction is slowly built (with good writing in both cases IMO) to just suddenly completely dissapear for the author's convenience. It's bad writing.
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