I've built a few small projects with just backend rendered views in Node.js, and then did all the dynamic "SPA" like features with Unpoly. Turned out a lot better than I thought. Things such as authentication being a lot easier and not having to build an API really helped speeding up things.
I mean I have a lot of experience with various front end component systems on desktop on the web, including Microsoft stuff and in the browser some Angular, React and Vue. But for my current project which is a little bit involved, I decided to skip React. It is actually working out fine. I assume React devs who see it will suggest that it's time to take me out behind the barn and put me out of my misery though.