You can see all my reviews here: Books Are The New Black

Oof. This one hurts a little bit. I buddy-read this with Julie and Dini. We all kind of had some similar thoughts. I just don’t think this was the book for me or my age.

First, I’ll start with what I did like…

I really love the cover. LOL. I mean it’s pretty great and inviting. I also really enjoyed all the food and culture. It’s packed full of culture. Dylan was kind of teaching Theo about his culture but helping us understand too. A couple of times, it turned into “info-dumps.”Another thing that I really enjoyed was Dylan’s family! His cousin Meg was hilarious and I would probably consider reading a book about her.

The beginning and middle of this book were the hardest parts to get through. It does get a little better towards the end but there are several things I struggled with throughout this book. There are a lot of cringe moments between Dylan and Theo. I don’t really want to get into specifics because I don’t want to give spoilers away. Most of these moments came when it had to do with the differences in their social status or in sexual aspects. I almost felt like Theo didn’t take Dylan’s feelings into consideration and he kind of steamrolled him into whatever he wanted. It was almost like he was trying to change him and I was not about that.

The writing was also hard to get through in this book. While this is a rather quick read, the writing was all over the place. There are a lot of choppy sentences and dialogue that really took me out of my flow. The pacing is off and I felt like the last bit of the book was really rushed to get it to come together.

Overall, It was just not the book for me. The family aspect, culture, and food are the best parts. I’m not kidding, I was constantly hungry while reading this book!!

Many thanks to Underlined and Netgalley for an e-arc. All thoughts and opinions are my own.