Quick Stats
Age Rating: 14/15+
Overall: 4 stars
Characters: 4.5/5
Plot: 3.5/5
Setting: 4/5
Writing: 4/5

Thank you Penguin Teen and NetGalley for an eARC of this novel! All thoughts and opinions are my own.

Do you like enemies/rivals to lovers? How about fake dating? No? Maybe the one bed trope is more your style—this book has ALL OF THAT. I wasn’t a fan of Cameron Lund’s debut novel, so I was very apprehensive going into this one—but I really enjoyed it! I liked Penny a lot, and I absolutely adored Kai. I might be biased because he reminded me of my own boyfriend a little, but that’s fine. I also really liked Sarah. She was great and I wanted to kick Penny for not fully realizing that sooner. I think that Olivia and Jordan’s characters were really flat and one-dimensional, which was disappointing, but the other characters were so well written it made up for that to me. The plot was fun enough and easy to follow, but it was lacking at times. There were places it dragged. I did really enjoy the sort of split timeline thing that showed the “before everything blew up” versus the present day. I was not expecting the twist at the end, but I wasn’t a fan of it. It felt unnecessary. The whole “happily ever after—oh wait, everything just imploded” trope is one of my least favorite things about YA contemporaries.
However, the book did use like, all my favorite tropes as well, so that little mishap is forgiven. I definitely recommend checking this book out!