I think Olivia Dade and I need to part ways, unfortunately. I really disliked ALL THE FEELS, and this one wasn't all that much better.

My biggest issue with ATF was how horrible Alex was about Lauren's body, and while Peter is much cooler about Maria's appearance than Alex was (even if Alex was meant to be joking about his feelings about Lauren), he still has a really gross moment where he reminds Maria that she's fat and could be replaced by a more conventionally hot actress and also is like super rude about her acting abilities? And he does apologize quickly and admit he was a dick, but I am 1000% not into heroes being dicks to heroines, particularly about their bodies.

The middle was fine enough and would have pushed it to three stars if not for the absolute dumbest conflict at the end, and I have a very high tolerance for Romance Reasons Dumb Conflicts. Throughout the book it feels like Dade is implying that the only acceptable way for someone to show love is the way the recipient would like to receive it? And I definitely think that it's important to demonstrate you love someone in a way that they find fulfilling, but I also think it's important to recognize when someone is demonstrating their love in the only way they know how to or feel comfortable doing.

Some other things bothered me about the book - the pacing is kind of weird, Maria and Peter both have issues stemming from exes that are just weirdly used, Maria is

adopted, and I feel like that was used simply for the trauma and then the trauma was hardly explored

, and Alex is once again a horrific human being, sending Maria and Peter real-person fanfics people have written about them which just seems like a monstrous invasion of privacy. There's enough here (and in the last two books) to tell me that Olivia is simply not an author for me. I definitely thought her last book was problematic, and I don't think that's true for this one, but it's time for me to move my energy into other authors.

Thank you Avon and NetGalley for the ARC!