On one hand, this book probably had no business being this long. On the other hand, I kind of loved a lot of these gradual, slow-paced developments. It read like a fanfic about original characters, the type of story that’s more of a character and relationships study with plot happening in the background to nudge the characters’ toward specific developments. The LI wouldn’t have reason to take the MC shopping if the MC’s house doesn’t mysteriously burn down first, you know what I mean?

The relationship itself is a super slow burn, too: it takes these guys the length of an average book to start affirming their mutual interest. Fine by me—I love me some slow burn, and it works with both of their backstories—but I feel like there’s a definite discrepancy between this and the book’s title and packaging. The cover, to me, suggests an earlier onset of the heat, so to speak.

While on the whole I didn’t mind the slowness, I was a bit annoyed by how long the misunderstandings dragged on. Blair, at least, tried to talk about the assumptions he’d made about Richard, giving the latter the opportunity to clear the air (the fact that the opportunity was ignored, well… that’s hardly on Blair). On the other hand, Richard just continued to agonize over and over about Blair not remembering stuff that… *he could have just told him*. This was honestly mildly ridiculous. I mean, there were some worldbuilding-related reasons for why he couldn’t, I suppose, but they were fuzzy and introduced too late.

That’s another thing that made this book read like a fanfic: the worldbuilding sparseness. “Here’s a small town full of supernaturals, abiding by rules that won’t be laid out, let’s go.“ It’s the kind of approach that works well when the story’s set in an existing setting—I sure don’t need a detailed rehashing of what Hogwarts or Sunnydale’s like. But with an original world, there’s only so long you can go entirely on vibes.

Overall, I can imagine some readers getting deterred by the slowness and the occasional repetitiveness, but I personally really enjoyed this deep focus on characters. I do wish the two POVs were a bit better balanced, and I definitely could have used more clarity with the worldbuilding. Also, the last 1/4 of the book was a bit of a mood whiplash as the author obviously rushed to tie up all the plot threads and the gradual developments turned into a rush instead.