Book safety, content warnings, and tropes down below.

This review is sort of bittersweet, because I really did enjoy this book loads, but I won’t be able to read the rest of the books because of some possibly triggering content (to me) in the coming books. However, I got an audio ARC, so a review there shall be, lol. It’s a fantastic first book, and even though there’s not a whole helluva lot actually happening, the slow building of a friendship between the MCs was great and felt sort of magical. The pacing and flow in the story was also top notch.

Silas is 100% a prickly broken boy dealing with trauma, and even though he does his best to push Ben away, Ben is persistent, and a great friend to Silas whether he wants it or not. I would still very much recommend you read at least the first book. I obviously can’t speak about the rest of the series as I won’t be able to read them, but Nikole Knight is a brilliant writer, and book 1 was quite special.

I thought the new-to-me narrator, Nick Newport, gave a great performance with this book, and would definitely recommend that format if you can.

⬇️ Blanket spoiler warning ⬇️

⚠️ Tropes & tags ⚠️
High school
Enemies to friends to lovers
Trauma
Slow burn
YA

⚠️ Content warning ⚠️
Homophobia
Physical assault
Attempted sexual assault (on page, chapter 1 and chapter 21)
Vomiting
Bullying (not between MCs)
Mentions of child abandonment
Parent death (past, on page)
Brief mentions of parent suicide
Mentions of cancer (side character, remission)
Underage drinking
References to drug use (not MCs)
Panic attacks

⚠️Book safety ⚠️
Cheating: No
OM/OW drama: Yes. One of the MCs is kissed by someone else (he doesn’t want it).
Breakup: No
POV: 1st person, single POV (POV switch in the epilogue only)
Genre: Contemporary YA romance, M/M
Strict roles or versatile: N/A. YA series.
MCs age: 18 and 18
Pages: 344