Book safety, content warnings, and tropes & tags down below.

If I’ve lost him here, maybe I can see him again in a world where you don’t have to be dreaming to be happy.

How do you even review a book with tropes and situations you normally wouldn’t enjoy, but it’s written so damn well that you just have to love it anyway? It’s pretty much a brilliant piece of literature, and I don’t know how to tell you why.

“It hurts too much,” he whispers. “I need to quit you slow, or it’s going to kill me.”

This book and the relationship between Ethan and Victor is so complicated that I don’t quite know how to talk about it. I struggled with the first half of the book. Not because it was bad in any way, but because it’s hard to read about broken people hurting each other because that’s all they’ve ever known. It hurts, and it’s written so well that you can’t help but keep going, even when it’s crushing you. I just wanted Victor to be okay. I wanted Ethan to understand him, and to just fix everything, but that’s not how it works. Victor had more demons than Ethan could realistically fight, but my god, he really tried. I laughed with them, cried with them, wanted to yell at them both, and I ended up absolutely loving them by the end. I thought ‘oh, this is sad’ several times while reading, but it turns out I hadnt reached the sad parts at all yet, because I ended up practically sobbing. If you want to read something akin to an emotional rollercoaster about a broken boy who says one thing while silently, maybe even unknowingly, wishing someone would listen to what he’s not saying, all while reading something that is written so beautifully that you might have to stop and take a second to reread and absorb it, this is the one for you. I’m sure I’ll keep thinking about Ethan and Victor and their story for a long time.

Blanket spoiler warning ⬇️

⚠️ Tropes & tags ⚠️
Enemies to lovers, swimmer, athlete, past doping scandal, hurt/comfort, slow burn, bratty bottom, inexperienced top, mental health, fake relationship

⚠️⚠️ Content warning ⚠️⚠️
Explicit sexual content
Drug abuse
Disordered eating
Suicidal ideation
Sexual abuse (off-page)
Mental illness
Homophobic language
Grief
Death of a family member (in the past, few details)

⚠️⚠️⚠️ Book safety ⚠️⚠️⚠️
Cheating: No
OM drama: Yes, ‘fade to black’ sexual situation with other people. All before MCs get together
Third-act breakup: Not technically
POV: 1st person, dual POV
Strict roles or versatile: Strict roles

I don’t know how to even pick favorite quotes from this, so here, have a bunch of them:

You tore me open and put me back together but you kept something for yourself. You won’t give it back, and now I belong to you.

I contemplate if forcibly dragging someone to safety whether they want to or not really counts as saving them.

We give each other every possible last kiss, so that our dreams have plenty to choose from.

The way he always seems to be able to pull me in just enough to hurt when he lashes out again.

As long as he’s here, nothing bad can come near me because there’s no room for anything but him and me and the ways we hurt each other.

Love has borders, limitations. A million movies and a billion books have charted its course. We chase it because we already know how it makes us feel, and once you’re in love, your only choice is to fall back out of it again.