Z. A. Maxfield is kind of hit-or-miss for me; I'm not always into the tropes she favors or the themes the writes about, and the quality of the editing varies depending on who the publisher is.

This book, though. THIS BOOK.

I started reading it this morning in bed while I did my 30 minutes of light therapy before getting up. I kept reading while I made breakfast, and while I ate breakfast. And while sitting at my desk, when I was supposed to be doing some freelance work. I read while waiting for water to boil for tea, and while the teabag steeped. I read until I finished the last page, surfacing to find myself a little teary-eyed, with my cheeks aching from smiling.

Nash and Spencer aren't perfect, but they're not jerks, either. They're real human beings who are both doing their best, trying to figure out how they fit together. There's no OTT melodrama—these aren't hormone-driven, tantrum-inclined adolescents in the guise of twentysomething men—but the story has no shortage of true, heartfelt emotion.

As someone who wishes more romances acknowledged that relationships can be messy and that not everything fits into neat black-or-white, evil-or-good boxes, I'm especially glad that

Spoiler

we got to see Peter's perspective on the breakdown of his and Spencer's marriage. It would be easy for a lazy writer to vilify him, leaving the reader with only the tabloid version of the story and Spencer's heartbreak to judge him by; Maxfield doesn't take the lazy route, though, and I applaud her for that.