My first full 5 Star book of 2022!
I loved this. This is exactly the type of romance I want to read and I could not be happier. While I have never read Blake before, I have a few of her YA books sitting on my Kindle waiting to be read, so when I saw she wrote a sapphic adult romance, I just knew I had to read it. I was also happy to see that Berkley keeps putting out new sapphic books and I hope they continue since they have all been enjoyable. Anyway, this is a book I would absolutely recommend to any romance fans and I’m hopeful that people will enjoy it as much as I did.
First, I want to mention again that this is an adult romance. I noticed quite a few people marked this YA, probably because of what Blake normally writes, but this is definitely not YA and people should know that going into it. I’ve been having better luck with YA lately so this was a real treat for me to read such a great adult romance. I was trying to figure out what tropes this book fit but it was a little tough to do. It is kind of a second chance romance, but not really. The second chances are really more about different friendships. I then was thinking maybe enemies to lovers, but that doesn’t really work either -more like indifferent to lovers maybe-. This book doesn’t quite fit into any one box but that might be one of the reasons it was so good.
The characters in this book are really well done. It is not just the two mains but also a group of friends that the book centers on like Astrid, the ice queen -who you want to know more about-, and Iris, the comedic relief. I did find the sort of villain characters to have been a tad cartoonish at times, but one added to some good emotional moments where the other added to some enjoyable humor. In the end, the fact they were a bit over-the-top actually worked. There was even a well written kid character and a well done ex character which both can be pretty rare in sapphic books. Everyone was just on pointe and you feel completely transported into this small town among this interesting group of characters.
While I really loved every part of this book, the romance really shines. I loved the two mains together. They had this great mix of sweetness and heat that was exactly what you want to see in a good romance. The chemistry was perfect and it just got stronger as the book went on. I won’t go into details, for spoiler reasons, but I have to say that I just LOVED the meet-cute. It would easily make my list of top favorite meet-cutes ever. I found that it actually gave me butterflies in my stomach and it’s been a long time since a book did that. It was great, just like the whole book.
TLDR: This was a real joy to read and it was my favorite book of 2022 so far. It was not perfect, there were a few tiny bumps, but there was so much good here that anything little that might have been an issue, ended up not mattering one bit. I loved the humor, all the emotions, the friendships, and the really good chemistry and heat. It was such a well-rounded book and I want to read more. I’m happy to say that yes, there is more coming and that there will be a second book starting the ice queen character. I honestly can’t wait. This is an easy book to recommend and I’m excited to see everyone else fall in love with it too.
An ARC was given to me for a review.
