First half of the book was a solid 2 stars.
Second half took a turn and gets 5 stars on its own.

So, I averaged. Rounded up. Whatever.

The trope for this book is grumpy sunshine—one of my all-time favorites. The problem I was having, and continued to have until the book sort of gave up on it, was that the main character spent pages upon pages, chapters upon chapters, telling us how surly she is. So surly. So grumpy. A straight-up storm cloud. Yet, you literally never see any evidence of this. Seriously. None. I kept rolling my eyes and loudly sighing during the audiobook when I could feel another I’m-so-surly monologue coming on. I also had a hard time getting on board with the sunshine. Not because there was anything wrong with him. It’s more that we really didn’t get to see any scenes with him. We’d see him, but we wouldn’t really spend any time with him. It would be like, “The flight to this place was spent sitting a few rows away from him. Now I’m sitting here being a grump again. Grump grump grump grump. Oh, now we’re at the game. He’s playing. Grump grump. He stopped by to drop something off. End scene.”

But then the second half comes in.