Abigail

It gets a star for the fact I managed to finish it at all, but truly? Not worth the time spent reading it. I don't know which book people are reading when they call it good story-telling but it wasn't this one. Cringy, terribly two-dimensional characters, the MOST infuriating FMC I've read in a while - the list could honestly go on. The best character was unceremoniously killed off in the beginning, so I should have realised it was all downhill from there.

The timeline of events is a little bit iffy in my opinion. Hazel and Grey are supposed to have ended on particularly bad terms ten years previous, but can suddenly immediately overlook this the moment they reconnect because they like to be competitive and have instant sexual attraction? Please keep in mind this initial change in relationship/friendship status happens over the course of, if I recall correctly, two weeks? Four weeks total for a change in opinion even though they are each adamant the other is toxic.

This is like a speedrun reunion.

In only two months: They meet, hook up, decide prom queen was the villain who broke them up, Hazel considers up-heaving her entire life to move to NYC, decides she doesn't want to move to NYC because he works too late and is stressed too often based on the two weekends she's spent there with him.

Even more wildly, Gray decides (once Hazel decides NYC is not a place she wants to live and breaks up with him) "actually, peace is wherever Hazel is. I've loved her all my life, I'm going to take a sabbatical from my 500k annual salary job as an investment banker, set up an LLC in a week to do renovation work because the four weeks I spent doing up a house with my two younger brothers was truly eye-opening, and conveniently I'm also going to win a bid with the local Bayshore council (even though he has not a single building to include in a portfolio and his only offering is a house that's not even finished???) to do all the downtown building renovation because I'm the only local business that offers this service (despite the town changing a whole lot in the last ten years??? nobody else thought to do a reno business in an up and coming town in the past ten years????) and I'll move back home to be with her for a happily ever after ending!"

Sorry?? Wild.

If you suspend your disbelief for a majority of the fast-paced decision-making, insta-feelings and the painful miscommunication tropes, it's a decent enough read.

But someone please remove the author's permission to use the word 'juicy'.