I’ll start by saying I love Anyta Sunday. Her books usually are top reads for me. I’ve given most of them at least four stars. Leo Loves Aries and Taboo for You are in my top ten favorite reads, any genre. So to say I didn’t like this one, yeah, it hurts a little.

If I understand correctly, this is an older work of hers (co-written by Andy Gallo) and was re-released. It just doesn’t stand up to the quality of her current writing.

The writing style felt off. Very little flow. Much of the book just didn’t make sense. The football scene was weird. It didn’t feel like it belonged. Our main character, Jack had a brother/best friend, Marcus. For much of the first chapter I couldn’t tell who the mc was, was it Jack or Marcus? There was a lack of pronouns being used, so it read weird. There were also some inconsistencies that took me out of the moment, and had me going back through other chapters to see if I had missed something.

Jack lost his parents, and Marcus’ parents were his guardians. Jack and Marcus belonged to the same frat that their dads had been members of. This was another issue with telling who was whom. Sometimes “my dad” was used to refer to Jack’s dad. Other times they used his name, Sean. This wouldn’t have mattered except they started using Sean without really saying who he was at first. And it also seemed odd that Jack would look at a picture of his and Marcus’ dad and refer to the men as “Sean and Trevor”. I can’t help but to think most would say “Dad and Trevor”.

Losing his parents caused Jack to have some issues with his mental health. As someone who has diagnosed PTSD, I didn’t like the way this was handled at all. Jack would have a meltdown (I believe that’s what he called it) when he experienced something that reminded him of his family. While that happens, he seemed to just cry a lot and then move on. It was also mentioned that he was on antidepressants. There was no other talk of his mental health care. It seemed like the whole mental health aspect was thrown in just to have a reason for Jack to think he couldn’t have a good relationship, as his previous boyfriend broke up with him because of it.

Ed was in the closet. Fine. I can definitely buy that. But the way it was handled? There didn’t seem to be much of a reason for it, other than he thought he might lose his job. And that was all a huge misunderstanding. He jumped to a conclusion with no proof. Everyone deserves to come out on their own terms. Had this story shown more of Ed and why he felt he couldn’t come out, other than “I have to keep my job”, it would have maybe been more convincing. I would have liked to get Ed’s POV. This is one book where I think dual POV’s would have added a lot to the story.

The main conflict between Jack and Ed was that Jack had made a childish bet with an asshole frat brother. There didn’t seem to be any real reason for the bet to be as serious as it was. Like, so you back out of the bet? The dude can’t force you out. Just change your mind. Talk to Ed. There were so many options to just not have this conflict.

It wasn’t that I didn’t like the characters. They were okay. I would have liked to know them a bit better, actually. I found that I wasn’t rooting for Jack and Ed because I didn’t care all that much about them. Oddly, my favorite couples ended up being the side couples. I wanted to read about Brittney and Seth and about Marcus and Nessa more than I wanted to read about Jack and Ed.

While this wasn’t my favorite read, I’ll still be reading everything Anyta Sunday releases. And I look forward to discovering more works by Andy Gallo.