I had no expectations going into this… and after finishing it I am neither swept off my feet but not disappointed to have read it.

This book is well written and the writing did capture me from page 1 that I did end up enjoying the story… but it does have the feeling of 2000’s YA… my 14 year old self would have loved this and eaten up sassy powerful “bad girl” Avery. She would have wanted to be her in every way possible.. however 33 year old me has changed a bit in tastes and as a result I felt the amount of action in this book for how few pages there are is a lot so it moved very fast through scenes so doesn’t go very deep. This book would have been amazing if it went deeper than surface level and didn’t spend so much time focusing on plot development and forgetting about character development

I want a little more feeling and meat to my characterisation, I don’t necessarily want characters to “suffer” but I want them to work through issues properly.

I was mega upset that Julian died in almost the first few chapters because I hate characters that are plot armour and just written to die… but besides a few pages of Avery dealing with it (almost only for 1 night). She kinda just moves on and that’s it… his betrayal would have hurt more if she felt more. As a result the shock factor of finding him alive didn’t emotionally cause as much of a reaction in me while reading, as Avery did seem to care for him but “not really”.

I just feel “whelmed”.

Overall the story does have its moments of tenderness but also has moments that irritated me with Avery’s internal monologue of needing to repeat everything when she was processing situations.
Three times.
Three times.
Three times.

I don’t know what to make of Derek. He doesn’t talk much and is just McBroody really. I need a little more of him to make up my mind

I wanted to like him but the book ended to soon to fully redeem my trust

Worth the read to pass the time and will continue the series.