Phenomenal. After this novel & Spells for Forgetting it is safe to say Adrienne Young is now an auto buy author. Her books continue to captivate. This is one of the best multiple-timeline/time travel book I have read - the heart of the story and characters is unmatched

This was compulsively readable but that doesn’t mean I enjoyed my time here.

I really wavered with this one. Overall....I struggle with Ali Hazelwood in general but this one continues the upward trend in writing improvement that I noticed in Love Theoretically so I was hopeful. I like that this does not rely 100% on a miscommunication trope like her other novels, the main characters actually speak to each other (shocking, I know) but it is an interesting choice to have most of their character developing conversations happen while they are about to/in the middle of/just finished having sex. The rest of the time it is all internal dialog that they may or may not share with the other person. Another trend that is just rampant with Ali Hazelwood is a power imbalance - luckily this isn't a coworkers or faculty/student situation but Eli's financial firm 100% holds the power/ directs the power when it comes to what is happening with Rue's work place and her scientific patent so it still feels kind of icky when I think on it too long. This hovers at a 2.5 or 3 star for me but I really think I need to round down because it is not something which will stick. Love Theoretically is still the best of the bunch for me.

This will come as a shock (please see my 1 and 2 star reviews for the whole Hazelwood oeuvre) I think a lot of my past complaints are still valid AND present -teeny tiny FMC meets big tall huge MMC, she thinks he doesn't even know she exists, he noticed her years ago and has never quite let that go -some really strange plot points

• some cringy spice but no one had their breasts compared to a planet so honestly it is already an improvement.

However, my biggest gripe has ALWAYS been the lack of communication and let me tell you that has been fixed hear due to the nature of the spice in this book. I don't have high hopes for this communication problem to be fixed in subsequent books but here I was quite happy. Ali Hazelwood also just excels at writing the dynamic between friends. I LOVED Scarlett and Penelope! Their friendship was so lovely and I lived for the banter.

Speaking of names....what on earth. Scarlett Vandermeer and Lukas Blomqvist? The audio narrators just sounded like they were saying "Bloomfist" which may in fact be correct but I still hated. Everyone called Scarlett "Vandy" and the narrators made it sounds like "baby" whenever the coach was calling her name which made me pause and figure out if that was correct every single time.

So I didn't hate this and that was not what I expected to happen when I hate read Ali Hazlewood at this point....I'm as surprised as you are with a 4 star review.

I really wanted to love this. Nikita Gill is a queen of language and succinct prose. Unfortunately, the narrative structure felt too disjointed for me and the audiobook really suffers for it. It took far too long for me to settle in to the character and plot. The story is almost told in omnipresent vignettes. I don’t know how else to describe it.