A major content warning for alcohol. This might be obvious to some from the title and the cover, some books titles or covers are just punny references and not central to the story, so I want others to be aware going in. This book centers very heavily around alcoholic drinks, and if you are sober or are otherwise needing to avoid heavy themes of drinking, this book is not for you. Every single chapter, or nearly at the least, features alcohol or drinking, in large part because the main character works as a bartender. While this is not a trigger for me, I cannot drink because of medical reasons so I did feel a bit of a disconnect from the subject matter of this book. 

That being said, I really enjoyed one of my first polyamorous romance books! Our main character, Mel, is so messy and while I love that about her, sometimes I also wanted to shake her character for being so conflict avoidant and leading us to avoidable situations. Of the individual pairings, I was probably most enraptured by Kade & Mel. I love the trope of "I think they hate me but really they have a massive crush on me," and it's cute to see it played out with forced proximity.

I loved getting to see nonbinary representation, especially with a person AMAB as we usually do not get to see that representation as often. It brought one of my favorite lines in the book, something I could so easily see a "well meaning" person ignorant to trans people saying, which was "Oh! I thought only women could be nonbinary." It so perfectly captures how cis people still see nonbinary people as the gender they were assigned at birth (in particular, "women lite") that I wanted to show this to all of the cis people in my life to point out the hypocrisy and how not to be an ally. 

Overall, though, we mainly get to see queer & trans joy, with only a few moments of transphobia sprinkled in to show the everyday reality of trans people. I loved getting to see someone stumbling into polyamory for the first time and trying to work through her ignorance, including many questions and situations I could imagine myself getting into if I was in her place. Queerness can be a confusing journey, and I love books that approach baby queers (in this case, baby polyams?) and the joy and confusion that comes from new experiences and how isolating it can feel to think it comes naturally to everyone but you. 

My first TJ Alexander book, but I'm excited to explore more by them!