mangosugar's reviews
171 reviews

i took a month long break between the first and second halves of this book Because Life™️ so i was super excited to get back into and miss fawcett did not disappoint!! 

as a ugrad student who loves reading studies for fun, the format of this series scratches this itch in my brain so perfectly. and as an enemies-to-lovers addict and a slow-burn fiend, i was vibrating with overwhelming nausea (positive) while reading. i believe y’all call that butterflies in the stomach but baby it felt like a whole group of common folk was jumping on my intestines. in the best way possible. 

i adored most everything about this book, the only reason i didn’t give it 5 stars is because i personally felt it dragged quite a bit at the start. i understand the task of integrating world building that’s so complex and well-thought is tough, made all the more difficult by the scholarly format fawcett chose to write in. i think she did the best she could and i appreciate that. unfortunately, it wasn’t seamless, although the footnotes were a fantastic idea and helped a lot, because it took a considerable amount of time to set things up. again, though, this is a very small criticism that may not be shared by others who have better attention spans than me lmao

this was a waste of time 😃

laura dave doesn’t show and doesn’t put much effort in telling, either. i find her writing style so off-putting, repetitive and childish. the amount of times she repeats the same sentence because she doesn’t know how else to emphasize it drove me up a wall. her writing is so monotonous, just “i did that,” “i felt sad,” “there was this.” i’ve read more titillating encyclopedias. 

the premise for the story is interesting, but it doesn’t go anywhere until the last 30 pages when dave info-dumps on you like a gossipy coworker and just… stops fucking writing. she couldn’t even make up her mind on when the epilogue takes place. i imagine she just closed out the word document and sent it to the printers.

the twist or whatever, the reveal of where the titular “he” disappeared to and why he did it, is so disappointing. it has fuck-all to do with the first 200 pages and very little to do with him. you could scrap them and it wouldn’t change a thing, which is not what you want when you’re writing any type of book, much less a mystery where the clues are supposed to be hidden in plain sight from the beginning. 

the characters are so uncharismatic and impossible to root for. i kept forgetting the main character’s name because, somehow, she kept fading into the background of her own scenes. literally all we ever know about her is that she loves her dead grandpa, likes to woodwork, had absent parents and was engaged once before. we don’t even get to know why she and her ex-fiancé broke up despite him playing a bigger role than the current husband this story revolves around. all we get is hannah rolling her eyes at him when he goes out of his way to help her.

bailey isn’t much better. dave’s attempt to humanize her and make her seem empathetic fall so flat, it’s almost impressive. the most dave could do was have her tear up twice and cross her arms because hmph she’s an angsty teenager >:( 

give me a break. the only thing this book has is that the twist is actually unpredictable, because it doesn’t relate to any fucking thing that comes before it, so you literally could not anticipate it. we’re just thrown into another plot at the end and we’re told it makes sense because dave literally spells out the backstory all at once in 2 pages. 

and girl, the end… no one clapped. no one moved. in fact we all started booing.

wendell, when emily exists: i like him. i like that autistic man. and would i be wrong if i ask him at dinner “is you autistic?” cause i like that

(for reference lol https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMrLKvqP6/)

pros: 

• the second best male lead written by ana huang! xavier castillo, alongside kai, is a refreshingly normal man compared to the absolute freaks miss huang loves to write about. he’s respectful, funny, charismatic, smart, and most importantly not a mob boss, criminal, stalker or a fucking murderer. compared to the likes of christian harper or that italian sociopath, xavier is an angel sent for me specifically.

cons:

• very underwhelming female lead. there’s nothing glaringly terrible about sloane kensington, there were several moments i empathized with her and was rooting for her, but she’s just… dull. she’s another instance of ana huang thinking interesting character and backstory = rich people trauma. she’s identical to nearly all of huang’s other female leads because of my second con.

• boring ass story lmao. i almost stopped reading so many times because nothing remotely interesting ever happened. this book recycles all the tropes ana huang has already written into the ground over her many works and which make her characters indistinguishable: 

- abusive estranged socialite family
- cartoonishly evil fathers
- billionaire at risk of losing his fortune
- minor appearance of fmc’s toxic ex for the mmc to punch
- 827362 hotel surprises (surprise: denial of sexual tension in a foreign country)
- everyone talks exactly the same way
- 827362 character cameos from the ana huang cinematic universe that bog down the story 

• this book is unique in that the story is all over the place and there are way, wayyyy too many characters as i just said, yet most of these events are truly boring. there’s no excitement, no energy—that’s my biggest gripe against this book. the writing is stale, every single character besides xavier and occasionally sloane is dead on arrival. personally, i couldn’t for the life of me be engaged in the events of this story, partly because the stakes were meaningless and huang’s books are extremely formulaic in an oversaturated genre which already requires originality to stand apart.

• i don’t know if ana huang has a business or finance degree or smth but it felt like she just received it and wanted to brag about her knowledge but her publisher insisted the book needs to be a romance. no more board meetings and investment deals i BEG you miss huang