Perhaps I did myself a disservice by not reading the first book in this series but this summary appealed to me much more. It’s one of the only friends-to-lovers books I’ve seen in the recent barrage of fantasy romance books and a middle aged couple falling in love sounded sweet. Unfortunately the fantasy elements and world building of this book drove me batty. Nothing in the plot or character construction felt like it was necessary to take place in this fantasy world. Functionally everything in this story would be the same if it starred a Midwest couple in modern day America. The fantasy elements in the book did not seem earnest at all and instead gave a trite, cutesy feeling to a world with no depth. There was such a lack of imagination in the world building with a one-to-one relation between modern technologies and these fantasy equivalents; cars and autoducks, e-mail and mail delivered by hedgehog, horseradish and aqua mares. Why go to the trouble of creating a fantasy world only to write a story that feels so unfantastical?