If Gregory Ashe's long-term plan was to keep me so deeply invested in these books I'd forget to write my own, then bravo, sir. Mission accomplished. Guilt by Association was absolutely the title in the series that, until now, every reader has been holding their breath for. Me included. The slow burn, twists and turns, ups and downs, hope and heartbreak, all came together into this—this extremely fragile, tender, raw, and real romance that I just want to carefully wrap up for safekeeping because I know Hazard and Somers have more roller-coasters ahead of them. But my God. They made it. We made it. And the payoff has never been so satisfying.

The opening line of the book sets the whole stage for where Hazard is mentally and emotionally, and further explains his reactions and decisions down the road: 'Emery Hazard needed to break up with his boyfriend.' Ho boy. Now, I know a lot of folks probably didn't like Nico's character. We know as readers, even from the beginning, he's all kinds of wrong for Hazard. Somers knows it. Hell, Hazard does, on some level. But I loved everything about Nico in this book, because he was a representation of Hazard making another bad decision. Hazard staying with someone because it was safe and he was afraid. But like Alec and Billy, Nico had power over Hazard and finally, finally, in a beautifully crafted scene that just about tore my heart in two, Ashe was able to convey Hazard's epiphany to us. I think I've said this in every review, but I can't get enough of how Hazard acts and what he says, or doesn't, because he's such a profoundly real character. He's human. And humans screw up. A lot. By laying that all out for the reader, everything that makes Hazard who he is, Ashe has turned him into an extremely relatable piece of fiction, and relatable means strength, and strength keeps a long-running series going.

The mystery of this book was likely my favorite so far, too. Ashe does really well at rocking back and forth between heavy-hitting material, to 'still really screwed up but doesn't quite make you as sick as the previous title,' content. And a bit like Transposition, we're given a dead body, a handful of suspects, and no one saw a thing. Oh, I love that kind of mystery. Because by now I know Ashe has sprinkled the clues in right from the beginning and I have to be smart enough to ping on them. Plus, we're getting deeper into the local personalities, the scandals, dirt, and returning to previously established dangers while upping the chaos one dead body at a time.

Guilt by Association was marvelous. The series is marvelous. I'll re-read these books for the rest of my life.