I devoured the first one (Him) in less than 24 hours, loving it so much that I immediately bought the audiobook of the second and dove straight in... and I kind of wish I hadn't. The first one was a wonderful balance of pining angst that wasn't too angsty, packed with lots of happy and sexy and joyful moments from the main couple, even when they were actively pining for each other. Meanwhile, in the second one, it felt like they were one breath away from breaking up for the vast majority of the book. It's set during Ryan's rookie year, and they're trying to keep their relationship secret which understandably causes a lot of angst both for them and between them. They spend a lot of the book not really talking about it; even after they both realize they need to talk about it, life throws thing after thing at them that distracts them from having the very necessary conversation. I was sick of their relationship angst by 30% in, and it didn't get resolved until about the 80% mark. There's also a prominent homophobia plotline that just kind of sucks to read.

Furthermore, I found the pace kind of excruciatingly slow -- not sure I would have made it through without it being in audio form. There was a solid 25% in the middle of the book where I felt like nothing really was happening -- and the most interesting stuff that was happening wasn't the focus of the narrative. I felt about as depressed as Jamie did tbh. 

The dialogue and inner thoughts in this book struck me as more problematic than in the first book. There was more of the same engrained-sexism kind of dialogue that bothered me from the first book, but also it felt like there was an unpleasant serving "femme gays are less acceptable" from basically everyone. From Jamie thinking that he should buy cranberry juice so he can offer Ryan's teammates cosmos to "freak them out" to Ryan's distaste with being the "kind of gay" who cares about things like home decor and wearing makeup (in a televised interview). I don’t like the portrayal that the jocks are cool with queerness, so long as that queerness doesn’t look too queer.

There was also some weird biphobia from Ryan, with him worrying about Jamie "missing women" and "leaving him for a woman" someday and "having double the partners to choose from". None of it was explicitly biphobic, like it was never implied that Jamie was more likely to cheat or anything, but the whole tone of Ryan's angst about it gave me the ick.

A more minor note that the authors could have had no way to know would become relevant post-2020: there is a "sheep flu" that's going around and causes some fear in the public that's a bit reminiscent of covid (Jaime reports 16 people died from it at one point). Except the quarantine measures are almost laughable they're so strong, and it's a bit depressing to see what the public thought the general response to a deadly infectious disease would be in light of what we know now.