The sassy black best friend trope needs to END. (And no I do not care how long ago this book was written. Y’all should’ve known better.) White authors, please for the love of god, STOP writing black characters without ever having a conversation with an ACTUAL black person in real life. We don’t say “sis, gurl” in every sentence nor do we feel the need to EVER say “black Jesus” instead of just “jesus”. And the incorrect grammatically structured sentences as a poor substitute for AAVE when it’s very much clear you did not do any research into the syntax/grammar of the dialect? Why are y’all so.... ugh. If you write a black character, have a black person take a read before you publish and perpetuate the ever annoying stereotypes that reduces us to our one-liners.

Also Des makes some questionable statements, heavy on rape undertones, knowing that Callie is a survivor of sexual abuse. And it’s kind of just glossed over?? She never says anything about it, and he doesn’t acknowledge how fucked up what he said is. It was really just out of place considering his reasoning for not being with her in the first book.. and overall, just shitty.