TW: Grief

Okay, so there is a lot to love about this book. I love that the trope of "manwhore falls for sweet, commitment-type heroine" is flipped. Here our heroine, Dani Brown, is the one with commitment issues and has no problem with casual sex. While Zafir is someone who doesn't engage in purely sexual relationships.

Can I just take a moment to say how much I fucking LOVE that we have a hero who isn't led the ever present romance book "manwhore"? Because I love it so very, very much.

Please, authors, more of these men.

I also appreciate that Dani was open with her sexuality and made no apologies for being someone who was interested only in friends-with-benefits relationships. I loved that she wasn't your every-single-romance white, cis-het, virginal heroine. Dani is black, a proud bi-sexual (yay! bi-rep) and sexually confident. Oh, and she's an academic and she practices witchcraft! As an individual character, Dani is awesome.

As for Zafir, I loved him so much. He's loving, understanding to a fault, a good friend, a great family member. He spends his free time helping kids with anxiety. Once again, I appreciated the representation used here. Zafir is Muslim. And Zafir suffers with anxiety. I have anxiety disorder myself, so I was happy to see it represented. All to often writers use anxiety as a throw away plot point, mentioned, but it never impacts the story or the character at all. This isn't the case here. We see Zafir suffering with it.

So, take two completely amazing characters, and this book should be five stars. On paper, it honestly should be. But I found that, while I loved Dani in so many ways, when it came to her as a romantic heroine, I didn't always like her. The relationship between her and Zaf seemed way too one-sided. I felt like he had genuine feelings for Dani, while she was using him because she was bored and/or needed to get laid. I get that she's not into relationships. And, yeah, she's upfront with Zafir about that. I feel like on some level she had to know that she was going to hurt Zafir, but she didn't really care. While Dani was this completely driven character, and had so many good qualities, she also came across as very selfish. Obviously, it's not that I think women are required to be in a relationship just because a man is their friend and treats them well. But there was some sort of line with Dani and Zafir where it just felt like she was taking advantage of his feelings.

That leads me to Zafir. While I loved nearly everything about him, I didn't love that he was so open to just being Dani's "fuck buddy" when he so clearly wanted more. Zafir's inner monologue about Dani not owing him anything, and that he was happy just to be her friend was on point, as far as what we should expect from men. No man deserves a relationship just because he wants one. But Zafir is also written as having anxiety to the point of it adversely affected his entire life in a profound way. Most people who have gone through enough therapy to be counseling others on anti-anxiety tips and techniques are usually a little bigger on self preservation. There was zero self preservation with Zafir. And he's also a smart dude. The one thing that didn't fit, imo, is that he would be okay with a relationship that he knows will not go anywhere. I wanted Zafir to want more for himself.

As for whether or not this book is worth the read and to whom I would recommend it?

Yes. Read it.

Everyone.

I originally gave it three stars, but bumped it to four. The things I liked about this book are so important to me, that I couldn't stick with just three stars. The diversity. The sex positivity. The writing, just the voice that Talia Hibbert has. All of these things make Take a Hint, Dani Brown well deserving of four stars.