if you're not as familiar with mutual aid, anti-capitalism and degrowth, then this might be up your alley. or perhaps if you wanted to hear about the above from an Indigenous (specifically Potawatami) perspective, then maybe this is for you too. i don't think i got that much from this besides a reminder to read rebecca solnit's "a paradise built from hell" (been hearing good things about this for at least a year now), and probably wouldn't have finished this if it wasn't assigned reading (there are prob good tidbits in here, i'm just not the target audience)

i do like the call for action that Kimmerer added at the end (and i hope people are taking her up on it!), as well as her continuing to put her mouth is by redistributing her advance payment back to the land.

was surprised by how short this was/felt. i think if it was longer, there would have been more room for the characters to feel more fleshed out

whewwwwww (in a good, panting sort of way). this has a few scenes that i could not stand in another book i was reading a few days ago, but they stuck the landing and made sense and were hot here!

i feel like the stakes would have felt higher to the reader if it was revealed earlier why valeria is being controlled by her dad (i assumed it was money even though it's mentioned multiple times how much money she makes from her job), but damn. i was not expecting that one.

i think my least favorite part was lander's name. LANDER? what in the nepo baby trust fund white manboy. which, maybe the author was going for, but ugh lander. sounds like launder.

i listened to the audiobook and i do not rec that format, i think reading would be much better! mostly because each chapter had the narrator spelling out each url that the author cited, and that was not helpful for me at all (i would have preferred all the citations at the end of the book as an appendix or something).

i also think i am not the target audience, as i am somewhat familiar with Indigenous and First Nations history in the so-called "united states," some of which has overlap with what was mentioned in this book. i didn't know a lot of the words and acronyms mentioned in the blurb, so i thought this would be a lot of new material for me, but it overall was not (the author says somewhere around the 3/4 mark of the book that this is more of a 101, which would have been helpful for me to know earlier).

i also am convinced that the author was trying to reach people who would otherwise see her, her Indigeneity and her arguments in bad faith, and i was not about it. i personally don't think anyone who is thinking like that wouldn't even pick up this book.

i think my expectations were too high for this one ): i've read the other two books in this series and thought they were solid though i can't say i really remember them, but another romance author (can't remember who sigh) specifically shouted this book out in their newsletter with words that (again i can't remember who or what they said exactly) convinced me so hard to read this one.

this one by nature is different vibes than the first two in the book, mostly because the main character's beloved aunt, her closest family member, is dying, and it colors everything. i'm not saying that this isn't a book that deserves to be out there, but it's definitely not all sunshine and banter. it feels realistic in the sense where jazmyn is in denial about what's going on since her aunt has been chronically ill for a while, and she's trying to avoid how she feels about the upcoming loss by not talking about it with those around her to pretend it's less real. the last time i read a romance book that was so heavily focused on grief and illness with a parent/parental figure was "the heart principle" by anna hoang and similiar to how i feel about that one, i think readers need to be prepared about how intense and rough and long some of these books feel at times because of the non-romance things happening in the characters' lives.

romance wise, on paper i could see why they should be together. in actuality, i was lowkey not impressed by lamar. imo, jazmyn does end up putting herself out there multiple times when sharing her emotions with him (but obviously she's imperfect and is also grieiving so she hasn't always been upfront with him, though i would argue she's mostly not upfront about her aunt rather than her personal feelings), only for him to not really respond or bring things up again. he's doing a lot of gift giving and paying which ok great but i personally would have liked him to be more present and emotionally available earlier in the book.

i'm not a sports fan like that, nor will i ever be, so i am bringing that into my reading experience. but why is jazz so concerned about his career? a random defensive player of the month award is not worth all that agonizing, jazz!!