This fucking ATEEEE. Jennifer Ashley is a god at writing the intimacy between people who are inextricably connected (and sometimes don't want to be!). There's this gorgeous cadence to this book where two people who love each other and hate each other and miss each other enormously are simultaneously each other's greatest allies and greatest fears. At this point, Mac and Isabella have been apart as long as they were ever together, and yet the ways they remain family?? The comfort they can find in only each other?? The way they NEEDED the time apart and yet they can never truly be separated? Stellar.