Klune has written another beautiful achillean novel. This one is about Gordo and Mark as they navigate their way back to each other including forgiving each other and getting over their egos (mostly Gordo's ego).
There wasn't much for actual plot here except for towards the end, it was more based on the characters and their arcs. Which I didn't mind because Gordo had a lot of shit he needed to go through and get over, including his abandonment issues, his general lack of being open emotionally, and his trust issues.
I think Klune did a fantastic job working with this character arc and watching Gordo slowly change and get over his issues was handled very well. I liked the pacing of it, how it was so gradual but not too slow at the same time. It was definitely what his character needed before he could ever be with Mark again and I'm glad that he got the chance to do that.
The plot in this book, as I said before, was not a very big part of the book until the last like third of it. But when it did start up, it was really good and definitely set up the next book for what's to come. I also really enjoy that plot twist reveal right at the end, in the epilogue even. It was something that I definitely didn't see coming and I have questions about that will hopefully get answered in the next one.
That all being said, I do think this book had points where it was too slow or just too much. I think all of the overlap with the first book was largely unneeded. We already knew a majority of it and I don't think any of those scenes really added anything to the understanding of Gordo's character that we didn't get from the previous book. They almost just felt like filler pages and I definitely think they could have been cut.
I also don't really understand why the plot didn't happen sooner, timeline-wise. I think it said there were three years in between this plot starting and the events of the previous book? Why did it take so long for the interim alpha to decide to test the new Bennett alpha? Wouldn't make have tried earlier if she was always planning on keeping the position? It just doesn't really make sense to me.
Other than that, this was a wonderful book and I do still recommend this series to anyone who is looking for more mlm fantasy in their reading lives.