After enjoying the first book, I was looking forward to reading Grenade Bouquets, which I found to be a very satisfying sequel. I continued to love a lot of things that I enjoyed in the first book: all of the 90s references, the honest and unapologetic narration of Nico and the complete submersion into a world of music and grunge. I loved Daisy Jones & The Six and this definitely gave me similar vibes!

I find Nico to be such an interesting protagonist, partially because she's so flawed. Her reasoning for making some of the mistakes she made was written about so smoothly that I completely understood why she made them. There were a few people that she seemed to treat pretty harshly, not empathising with them very well, which she didn't seem to take much accountability for, still blaming them in the end. On the one hand this is a little frustrating and it would be nice to see her character develop to be the better/bigger person. But on the other hand, this is also an accurate portrayal of people's complicated emotions and motivations and the fact no one is perfect.

I do have a few knit-picky complaints: similarly to the first one I would've liked things to slow down sometimes so that we could just hang out with the characters in their downtime, possibly also resulting to the fact that there were some things that were 'told' rather than 'shown'. There were also a few typos, but these things didn't overly bother me because I was so invested in the story and was completely submerged into this world!

I really enjoyed this one!