This book was too messy for me. I've been wanting to read a cute fluffy romance lately (waaay too much fantasy and intense stuff recently), but this was just not it.

There's too many extras outside the romance itself that distract from it, and while I like a decent plot in my romance stories, I still want the focus to be the romance itself. Both main characters just had way too intense of a story for me, and while I may have liked them individually, it was Too Much.

Additionally, Tiffy's story was just a bit dramatic and unbelievable at times. I think stories of leaving abusive relationships and learning how to work with the ptsd and anxiety that came from those relationships are important, but there was just a better way it could've been handled here.

Spoiler

had Tiffy working through her trauma been the main focus, without the randomly appearing abusive ex, the story would've hit harder and been more believable. I'm not saying what happened in this book was impossible, I just think it was over the top at points. Tiffy can be suffering from the ghost of her ex without actually having to see him every 20 pages in an increasingly freaky altercation

It also just took me a while to get into this because of the position both MC's were in romance wise. Neither were in a position to enter a relationship soon, Tiffy being wrapped up in Justin/haunted by him and Leon literally in a long-term relationship with someone else, that I didn't start off wanting these two to be together necessarily. I had to grow into wanting them to be together, and by the time I wanted it it had already happened, so I lost the important moments of "hurry up and kiss already!"

There was a sweet spot to the book where it was a lot of cute fluff without too much of the outside drama, but that made up 20% of the book at most. It mainly just showed me what could have been,