5 ⭐️
Spice: 🌶️🌶️/5

Format: ebook

“Promises all made in earnest, raw with imperfections. All real. All unified by three simple words. ‘Say it again.’”

I don’t usually ever feel the need to justify my ratings, but I feel like this is a book that might call for it. And I’m going to try to keep this as spoiler-free as possible.

This is a book that made me kind of sit and ponder, and come to a conclusion that I can vehemently disagree with a lot of the actions of a main character and still rate it five stars. Because the emotions that this book pulled out of me, even if some of them were decidedly very negative, don’t allow me to rate this anything lower.

And the thing is, the author did such a great job writing these characters and making them so layered and multi-dimensional that I could understand where both Aaron and Daniel were coming from. 

Firstly, I absolutely adored the comedic aspects of this book. It had me laughing my ass off from the first page to the last. I don’t think I’d necessarily classify this book as a romcom, because it became very angsty and I wasn’t expecting it based on that classification. But I did enjoy all the laughs and humor, and appreciated that there were still a lot of lighthearted moments even in the midst of the rougher times.

I loved both Daniel and Aaron. Daniel was sweet and funny and so unapologetically himself. He had so much heart and I wouldn’t change a single thing about him. Aaron had so much love to give and his sweetness and his caring towards Daniel were everything. I loved his need to take care of Daniel, especially when we learn where it stems from.

Aaron made a lot of mistakes that hurt Daniel, but I also feel like I totally get why he feels the need to bury himself in piles and piles of financial security. And I don’t believe at all he would ever do it maliciously. It just took him a bit of time to rearrange his priorities. We also have to remember the timeline of the book, and that even though Aaron and Daniel move very fast, they’re not actually together very long - about two months if I’m recalling correctly. So I think Aaron taking two months to map out a new life in his head when he wasn’t planning to isn’t that crazy.

If you can’t tell, I feel very deeply for these characters and would go to war for them. I hate some of the things they did and said—that one scene made me physically ill—but I do believe they complement each other well and deserved the HEA they fought hard for.

Again, just because things happened in this book I didn’t agree with, I still think it deserves the rating I gave it. I love when a book is written well enough to make me feel such strong emotions, even if they’re sometimes negative.

I also want to commend this author for writing a book I’ve truly never read before. This plot, these characters, the choices they made… all were new and exciting to me. I never knew what was going to happen next and I loved the way I didn’t ever want to put this book down. I was immersed and addicted.

This is for sure going to be a book I reread many times. I just had so much fun with them.

*I received a free copy of this book from the author and this is my voluntary, honest review.