At long last, Bridget and A’tam get their story AND THEY GET COUPLES COUNSELING. This one is almost entirely their relationship, but it works. I love their individual issues and how they get addressed. A’tam realizing what he’s done wrong and changing is the freaking dream. There were also things about Bridget that I found so relatable.

My one small complaint is that the characterization of Steph seems to have done a 180 in the past two books, leading up to the next one in which she stars. I get that Dixon has so many characters she’s juggling here and the later ones don’t get much fleshed out earlier on, but our one previous Steph interaction really painted her as a bit of a mean girl, so this therapist angle is a bit of a swerve as a reader. But it makes me dread her story less than I did, especially as I’ll be interested to read about Juth & Pak.

ETA: Reading other people’s reviews and they are SO harsh towards Bridget. I’ve definitely been in situations where hooking up with a guy ended up terrible and the easiest answer was just to not do it again. Being not confrontational, telling someone something as brutal as that they’re bad in bed just sounds like the worst conversation ever. Also, obvious magic alien dudes are (eventually) taking notes here, but coming from a history of regular human dudes who would lose their shit over that accusation? I absolutely cannot blame her for not wanting to deal with that. And putting all the blame on Bridget and none on A’tam is basically what’s terrible about our society as a whole. I love that he puts in the work eventually, but he definitely carries his share of the blame for their relationship up until now.