I'm in a reviewing slump right now, so I'm going to keep this short: nobody is more surprised or disappointed than me that this was only a 3-star read for me. I'd heard so many rave reviews from people whose tastes usually aren't far off from mine, and I'm a tremendous sucker for the best-friends-to-lovers trope (especially when they were childhood friends!), so I think this should have worked out great for me.

Unfortunately, I didn't find the writing style 100% enjoyable, the characters struck me as a bit flat, and the conflict near the end was absolutely ridiculous and unnecessary. I don't normally mind petty conflicts and miscommunication that much in a romance, but I literally almost just DNFed this around the 80% mark because I was so over the way these two were treating each other!

Also, there are some strings left majorly untied, and while I'm sure that's because they'll be explored further in the next book (since Goodreads says this is a series), it was done in a way that just left me questioning my own reading comprehension. There's a line in the epilogue that threw me for such a loop, I had to go back a couple of pages and re-read to see if I had missed something (I hadn't). Honestly, I low key disliked the entire epilogue and wish it had been left out altogether.

There are a lot of things this book does right, though. I loved seeing a romance with an all-Black cast, I loved the banter and playfulness between Navaya and Xander, and I loved Xander's POV sections. He was the most enjoyable character in the book for me and I liked his little friend group and how they constantly gave him hell for everything.

While this book was a bit of a letdown for me, sadly, I can totally see why it's getting the high praise it is, and I am definitely interested in checking out more from this author in the future! If you're looking for a short, steamy, diverse friends-to-lovers romance, I definitely recommend giving this one a chance.