The premise of the story started out messy: Darcy is forced into road-tripping with her estranged mother a week before her wedding by her guilt tripping MIL, while just having been confessed to by her best friend Chloe (who is her fiancé’s brother). This sounded like a great relationship drama with a (hopefully) cathartic ending where problems are worked out and resolved. This is not that.

We get a few good chapters of character building, where it really starts to showcase the relationship and personalities of Darcy and Marja (her mother), when

Marja shoots a man and reveals that she has turned on the cartel and they will be taken into witness protection. From then on it’s a combination of cartel attacks, some Marja relationship drama, some Darcy - Marja relationship drama, some Darcy - Chloe - Michael relationship drama and then all of the above. With it all ending the book with Michael trying to baby trap Darcy, who says fuck being childfree, it’s a piece of Chloe as well, let me just change my whole life for this. Nothing feels resolved and it gives the vibes that everyone is pretty much stuck in the ending the received.

For what it’s worth, with how the author write, what I had assumed was the story (as per the summary on the back of the book), could have been a really book. Figuring out her relationship with her mother and seeing how it affected her relationship with Eloise (her MIL, that became a mother figure to her when she and her mom were estranged because she latched onto the first nice mom she found through her friend) and how that affected her relationship with Michael (her fiancé), whom she has been steamrolled by on most major decisions, but didn’t feel like she could push to hard as it would damage her new pseudo-family relationships and possible leave her isolated, especially from her best friend (who knew the whole time that Michael was scum, especially because he purposefully “threatened” her with his sway over Darcy, but chose not to tell Darcy in case she decided Chloe was in love with her — which she was). This dynamic has very interesting connotations and could take up a book (maybe two) with just getting Darcy into therapy to realized she own worth and be able to stand up for herself. This is book I was promised and not given. There is plot and not progress in the relationships and tbh I only kept reading because I thought there would be, but no, just plot points no character growth.