James was a sweetheart, but so many of the things he did for Madison felt wildly unrealistic to me, to the point that I just couldn’t connect with it. Like… sir, you are struggling financially, and taking such a massive risk purely out of love? that doesn’t feel romantic, it feels reckless. What if she genuinely couldn’t pull it off? You know her personally, not professionally. Maybe it’s a “me” thing because I appreciate more of a subtle gestures of love and care. But if someone did what James did in real life, I’d honestly be overwhelmed more than swooning. But again, maybe that’s what the author intended? Madison is a lot, so maybe the point was that they match each other.

With Madison, I had a love-hate relationship. Sometimes I enjoyed her humor and chaos, and other times she really grated on me. I also wasn’t fond of the whole Tommy situation. Even though it was very clear that she only liked James and it wasn’t really a love triangle, the angle still annoyed me — especially how she entertained Tommy’s flirting while getting jealous over James’s ex.

The restaurant “countdown to failure” also fell flat. It builds like something catastrophic is coming… and then it’s just both the brothers punching each other on the face and Madison having a meltdown after that. Nothing was actually ruined, and she definitely didn’t fail, so the payoff didn’t match the buildup.

I’m also not a big fan of the trope where one character has secretly loved the other forever while the other is oblivious or indifferent. I think that contributed a lot to my frustration with Madison (along with the Tommy thing). Sometimes that trope serves some great angst, but here it really didn’t (because there wasn’t any at all). It was very much friends-to-lovers, which I usually enjoy, but only a few books execute that trope well, and this wasn’t one of them.

That said, James and Madison were good together as a couple. He understood her better than anyone, and she cared for him deeply in return. As always, Sarah Adams absolutely nailed the emotional connection and relationship warmth. I just wish the plot itself had been stronger.