I was very skeptical at first because it felt a bit too much like "Red, White & Royal Blue" by Casey McQuiston (British vs. American, a prince, text messages), but I was quickly proven wrong. The biggest difference is the age gap between Prime Minister Oliver and Prince Callum. Oliver is fourteen years older, and that made the story so much better. He brings a mature touch to their relationship, supports Callum and is always there for him. This gives their bond real depth, and the way their relationship grows from friendship into love feels completely believable.

I absolutely loved the characters because they are such a great match and complement each other beautifully. It was wonderful to see Oliver accept Callum with all his quirks and to see Callum feel safe enough to be entirely himself around Oliver. That dynamic is also the reason Oliver fell in love first, and he fell hard.

The plot became a little predictable and cheesy toward the end, but I still loved it. I also enjoy that Jax Calder continues to write bonus chapters you can download by subscribing to her newsletter. It keeps the story going and gives you a glimpse into the characters lives after the main plot ends. I was thrilled that the bonus chapter revealed a whole new side of Oliver. There is so much trust between Oliver and Callum that it almost made me cry.

I was really looking forward to this book, but sadly it ended up being a pretty big disappointment for me.

The blurb promised me a possessed doll getting revenge on her killer, but that's not really what I got.

I was expecting a creepy cursed-doll story that leaned a little more into the kind of unsettling vibe you'd expect from a Chucky movie, for example. I wanted the possessed doll haunting her killer, making him question his sanity, and constantly reminding him of what he did. Moving around the house in the shadows, leaving cryptic messages behind, driving him insane with little clues about the murder that only he would understand...

This book had so much potential to be a creepy haunted-doll story, but instead it focused much more on different forms of grief and processing trauma than on the actual revenge.

The revenge aspect definitely got the short end of the stick and, in my opinion, was handled in the dumbest way possible. Leaving flyers around town, spray-painting messages on public walls, sending Instagram DMs... all things that can easily be traced back and, of course, end up getting the one living person helping the cursed doll into trouble.

I hate to say it, but I just found the story boring, repetitive, and the whole revenge plot really unsatisfying.

I wasn't a big fan of the ending either because after spending almost the entire book building up this revenge plan, the actual revenge itself was over surprisingly quickly.

Maybe I'm just a little bit unhinged, but I honestly expected more from this story. More scares, more revenge, and just more of everything.

I do have to give it some bonus points for the idea of a possessed bride doll, which I thought was a really cool premise. That's probably the main reason this still gets 3 stars from me.