although this book was much spicier than i thought, i actually really enjoyed it! i'd seen the other review on here saying they didn't like the second half of the book, so i was worried, whereas i feel like i almost had the opposite. to me, the beginning was really slow and i kept getting confused by different details that were unclear. but once they got to the competition, and particularly once obiora had realised his feelings for ejiro, i really enjoyed it, and struggled to put it down! it was definitely very sappy and cliche, but from reading the acknowledgements, where the author talks about writing it for escapism during the pandemic, i didn't mind that about this, and it was almost want i often say that i want (whether i actually do or not is a different story) of having so much of the book be kind of a happily ever after. like, part of the reason i think i love red white and royal blue so much is alex & henry spend so much of the book in a relationship, and dealing with the other conflicts, and that's kind of true with this one. (also, NO THIRD ACT BREAKUP OVER STUPID MISCOMMUNICATION). so i overall quite enjoyed it.

sigh
this was so promising and I'm really annoyed that I didn't end up loving it. the first half read like fanfiction and absolutely slapped, but as soon as they admitted their feelings for each other it just devolved into a sickeningly sappy mess.