the best kind of book that hurts a little when you leave, both a 5 stars for the vibes while reading (immaculate) but also 5 stars for the content & delivery of just about every aspect of this novel. i particularly love and appreciate the characters; i started to proclaim my love for Jinx’s character & existence, but want to drone on about Margot, JB, and Suzy… Ward, what a fantastic crew.

felt kind of meh/disinterested throughout the vast majority of the book but the ending is thought provoking in a way that is forcing me to sit with why i wasn’t engaged in the earlier chapters. i didn’t particularly like most of the characters and i’ll be damned if i was not meant to do so. this is complex and messy, but absolutely real in a way most fiction doesn’t achieve. i like that. the novel definitely did take the long way around to get to the ending though and it felt a little messy or unpolished in the plotting, but again, i did really like how the ending came together and maybe it was worth it

i really appreciate how race was approached and depicted as well - i do feel like that’s one thing done very, very well in that the author paints an accurate depiction of modern “racism” in a subtle but also very pointed manner.

• one of the biggest things that will stick out to me when thinking of this book in the future is the frequent and unnecessary(?) additions of lewdness or sexual portions. i read smut, i love sex in books, but felt a lot of the scenes or additions were surprising or misplaced. i’m not sure what’s bothering me specifically, but i double checked the author a few times bc it almost felt like a man’s writing with the unnecessary sexual scenes or descriptors that rarely seemed to add much substance to the book.

i’m curious if others have different feelings about that!

i sought out an MM romance written by a member of the MM community AND i didn’t pick the genre for me. once again, i’m not a romance girlie in any format & prefer mostly smut or darker romance. the steam in this is quite low compared to rachel reid’s game changers series which i prefer.

this is a sweet & simple romance with not a lot of steam. Denz as a main character didn’t offer enough substance outside of the familial pressure & his long winded disinterest in his career. overall it felt quite flat for the characters, storyline & the relationship drama/building. a little too much miscommunication & immaturity in the main characters (dez).

(an aside: (both gorgeous men of color MCs but apple apparently doesn’t want two Black men kissing?)

a book that ruined me and ruined any book after it for some period. absolutely gorgeous writing & an incredible story - a masterpiece. this put me in a slump in that magical heartbreak way that comes with finishing a story both incredible in writing style & the portrayal of the story itself. i am telling you moments of this book had me pausing to breathe after experiencing it & going back to read a lot of the scenes in print after hearing them on audio. i deem this book “heart wrenching” which is a very elite category. 

white people, specifically US citizens but also white people as a whole, need to feel a WHOLE lot more shame & disgust about both our history AND our current reality.

heartbreaking & important but also quite dense and reads a lot like a textbook in places. however, there are no pictures, so it’s just a lot of suffering at the hands of horrible, soulless government representatives & soldiers for the state on a long timeline. and i mean that literally as the one of the main focal points of this reading (audio) experience stands out is the sheer volume of numbers stated through the text between years/birth days/various dates.

ignorant entitled MEN talkin bout some made up “manifest destiny doctrine”. tbh, in the year of our lord 2026, we deserve a nuclear bombing.