’”Don’t apologize. Never apologize to me. I want to be that shoulder you need to cry on.” He tapped it. “Go on, use me all you want.”’


This was a really sweet single mom romance, with light enemies-to-lovers and the neighbor trope. I really enjoyed the relationship between our hero Elijah and our heroine Hadley. I loved the way Elijah came around to Hadley and her kids, and fell in love with them slowly and headfirst. He would always do anything for them, and I loved how he admitted his mistakes and prejudices towards her being a single mom, and he became absolutely smitten with Hadley and her kids.


However, I thought the writing was just-for lack of better words-cheesy. There were certain scenes that gave me the ick, and the way the author didn’t allow her heroine (who’s inherently younger than the hero, might I add, like by 9 years I think.) to cuss, and instead gave her phrases like “God Bless America” and shit like that. It was just fucking odd, especially since Hadley is supposed to be written as a mature a single mother of 2, juggling college at the beginning, a full-time job, and her crazy ex-boyfriend. I think the author intended it to be a cute little quirk, but I just found it weird, again because of how young Hadley really is. Even though she’s supposed to be a younger heroine written older, she’s just written young, and she also brings up high school with the hero and he says something along the lines of, “God you’re so young” but is still fully attracted to her?


I don’t know, the writing wasn’t that good. And don’t get me wrong, I really enjoyed Harley and Elijah’s relationship, but it just felt weird some of the things the author was writing for their relationship. Also he sucks her milk from her boobs during sex and I also find that…interesting. I didn’t expect a lactation kink to be something I read outside of Ao3 not gonna lie to y’all. Not into that personally, but I guess Elijah definitely was…


So overall, not a terrible book, the writing was just kind wattpady is what I’m trying to say. And I’ve read a lot of self-published books with wattpad-like writing and still gave the book 5 stars, but I was just getting too much ick from this one. Despite all my flaws, I didn’t hate this, but it definitely isn’t one of my new favorites.


➸ 3.5 stars