What I was hoping would be an easy, light hearted steam filled enemies-to-lovers/best friends younger sister story turned into a very mediocre read.
The writing style made it hard for me to get into the story. I would describe the style as very simplistic: a lot of “I did this this and this and then he did this this and this.” Every single thing was described and it made the story very clumpy, not easy-flowing and quite repetitive at time.
Once I did manage to get into the style and read chunks of the story at a time I found a lot of aspects of the book unbelievable. To begin with Conor (the male MC) is straight up mean to Darcey (the female MC) not in a cute oh he likes her so is mean to her way either but a straight up bullying sort of way, and I don’t like that this was romanticised. Secondly, there is a lot of inconsistencies with part of the plot that deals with Conor and Darcey’s older brother Chase enrolling in the army. They start by doing four years training and in the entire time don’t get to see their families once. I didn’t find this believable as I’m sure you have leave and would never go four years not seeing your family at least a little bit.
Overall as well as the unbelievable plot points, a lot of them were tragedy after tragedy for a dramatic affect that didn’t make it dramatic at all. I think they were probably added as plot points but to be honest it just made the story seem kind of bad. By the end you were thinking to yourself “what else could possibly go wrong”.
The book does have a happy ending and there’s enough romance and steamy scenes sprinkled throughout to make the book bearable but it’s not one I’d find myself recommending or reading again.
Some serious trigger warnings for this book: attempted sexual assault, serious injury, abduction, torture, PTSD, anger issues, army life, discussion of miscarriage