This was just as fluffy and fun as the first one, I had a ball and rolled my eyes exactly as many times as Jo Firestone probably hoped I would (and her audio narration was so good)

The whole time I was reading this I was torn between being impressed by what the author was doing and being bored out of my skull

This was disappointing in that it had remarkably little sport/racing for a formula 1 romance. The plot was fine, but just a bit dry (and vague…. Like if you’re gonna go in on f1 for human rights violations, let’s TALK talk about it!) for what I hoped would be more about the racing season.

Klaus and Natalia are both fun characters but are remarkably bad at communicating with each other and I really felt like their third act breakup was pretty warranted and his behavior was awful in a way that never got justified.

Nails in the coffin: from Natalia’s pov it sucked to see Phaedra come off as such an asshole, and the pregnancy trope is never my thing.

All in all this just wasn’t for me, but I’ll still read sage’s book because it was specific plot/trope choices that made this one flop.

I found this well constructed but at times a bit clunky. the conversations around race and queerness in particular came off weird, in that i wanted more insight there (the two fathers whole pivot from homophobic to repentant felt underexplored, in that the reasoning--revenge, regret-- was so obvious that it was written off and not delved into enough imo. that is to say, they spent a lot of time talking about how they regretted their behavior and were shit parents, but almost no time grappling with the transition from deadbeats to heroes). i think characters like mya and tangerine deserved more POVs, as they were fascinating to me but served mostly as plot devices.

overall not wowed but did find the story arc interesting and the conclusion satisfying (if predictable)