this book could have so been longer. I enjoyed the pace, and the murder mystery which wasn't TOO mystery but was still engaging. I just needed MORE. it felt way too short for the content and potential it has. I need more backstories, explanations, other POVs. it felt very lacking in the character department, which I guess maybe would have happened with a longer book, I don't know if there is a second book?? it wasn't implied in my copy but this is a series so I shall have to look

I’ve said it before and I will say it again, this has to be the worst rina Kent book I have read, I have so many issues from the quality of the actual book to the plot.

For starters, this felt like it was dancing the line between being an age-gap romance and just straight up paedophilia. This could be down to writing style, but at some points I really felt like it was implying that he had at some point thought of her as something other than his best friends daughter before the age of 18. Now this is just implied, but how the actual fuck could he have wanted to kiss her back on her eighteenth birthday without either having some inkling of a past feeling or being straight up paedophilic. Also the way that final love letter was written, did NOT need to have so much emphasis on her being a child/baby and how they met.

I also felt the quality was really down and maybe even rushed on this book. Now rina books are not famed for their amazing writing and they never will be but this one was truly worse. Usually it’s written in a way where I personally end up feeling slightly connected to the characters, their feelings, and who they are as a person but this never happened during this book- even with Nathaniel who was introduced prior to this standalone within the rina verse. The tension was bland, the chemistry had no depth making the sex scenes awful and I skimmed the majority in a “I want this over with way”. Cause what was the obsession with mentioning her being a brat or a good girl or a bad girl like an attempt of an edgy relationship but then never actually creating that within her character it was just spoken. I get it’s a sex thing but it still needs to make sense. Their relationship felt insanely built on lust, it was like a massively quick jump between lust and love I practically got whiplash.

Also I truly did not understand her brain being empty thing. It was never properly explained, and I just could never grasp the concept. It clearly wasn’t her feelings, or her zoning out or something like that, maybe it was a hint towards depression. But if it was there was no delve into that as a character. For this book being around 400 pages I feel like there is enough time to explore that considering I was able to understand her word phobia quite easily (which was different so enjoyable).