this review is just me ranting about some stuff that bothered me so feel free to ignore this

i'm not well versed in romance but now i know why it is boring to read about insta attraction. what gets me is that i don't buy the love part of their relationship. yes, they like each other, are comfortable talking about their lives, and even have cute-ish interactions (i'd call them average) but... so what?

their whole dynamic was there, i guess, but they felt like friends that were just very horny for each other. if this was a situation i saw happening with my own friends i'd just think their supposed love/deep feelings were desire clouding their judgment. don't get me wrong, clara and josh connected enough throughout the story but it felt very surface-level stuff, like the early stages of a friendship that would result in a one-night stand situation and that's it. i couldn't buy into their "gradual growth" of feelings for each other at all.

even if their relationship had been convincing clara didn't have people of her own. there's her aunt jill with whom she recently reconnected but it didn't feel like jill was relevant to clara's life besides being conveniently written to help clara (and josh) with their problems.
josh felt like his personality was being into clara and hers was blushing at the mere mention of sex. the whole thing felt infantilizing and too sex-driven, if that makes any sense.

and something irrelevant that made me even less interested in them: for a book that makes its love interest a porn star the sex was so... boring. i wasn't expecting insane or non-conventional sexy times but there's SO MUCH build-up to their first sex scene that i can't believe the actual thing was so tedious. it further convinced me that what they had were sexual chemistry and not romantic compatibility.

bottom line: good concept, poor romance, awkward pacing, convenient plot