Jojo
Ehh, unfortunately this didn't live up to the hype for me. This was like 90% smut without any real sense that the characters had romantic chemistry, and no plot. Despite having a long history together, once the MC's started hooking up early on (around the 20% mark) it honestly felt like they were just doing it out of boredom, and the romance never progressed from there. There were occasional moments of the fun banter I love in the Off-Campus series, and I think the story had a good premise for there to be a lot of angst - which is what I had hoped for.
However for me, the lack of romantic chemistry/development, along with a bunch of random casual sexism (from both MC's) and biphobia (from Wes) -both of which went unchallenged- really spoiled the reading experience for me here.
2.5⭐️
I started out enjoying this, but unfortunately I think this book suffered from only having Kaliya's first person POV. Pairing a single POV with a male lead (Danny) who feels like he's constantly alternating between hot and cold towards Kaliya, made for a really frustrating read throughout. Danny also has a girlfriend for a good chunk (50%) of the book, who then falls into the "evil ex" category within the second half. Additionally, Kaliya being way too quick to forgive him every time he pushes her away really started to bother me as the book went on- unfortunately, she began to feel like a bit of a doormat until very late in the book.
There were so many miscommunications between the characters, and since we kept having the push-pull dynamic until very late in the book along with a third act breakup that, while it wasn't the worst I've read by far, I did feel like their relationship development would have been better served by them tackling the evil ex's scheming as a team, rather than having another period of them putting a stop to their relationship due to conflict. By the end, I kind of still felt like they could be looking at a very rocky future, since we never see them face a roadblock and work through the issue together.
I did enjoy a lot of the discussions between characters about race and privilege in Hollywood, and I would love to read his parent's love story! The story within this story of them falling in love were some of my favourite parts of this book.
3.5 - this had a bit of a rough start, but I really enjoyed the characters and storyline more in the later half. I've heard the series improves a lot going forward, so I'm excited to continue the series!
