@ jenreadsromance pointed out on Twitter that this is a masterclass in tone and unraveling and i don't disagree. it's a terrifyingly accurate reflection of how the past four years could have gone and i'm not sure I could have handled it if tr*mp were still our president. i think one of my biggest issues with urban fantasy (besides it being slow burn) is that there's often an overwhelming amount of worldbuilding in the first book and the world Snyder created was parallel enough to our own potential future that it all made sense without a ton of extra information.

the hero is a vet, something that feels increasingly ickier for me as time goes by especially as the heroine is Punjab. her Sikh faith/culture is explored incredibly thoughtfully with a nuanced look at what it meant to be brown in the US after 9/11. there's also a moment where the couple addresses that the hero k*lled brown people overseas and how the heroine reconciles that knowledge with her feelings for him. i really appreciated how flawlessly Snyder wove things that must mirror her lived experiences into this story, including both fun interludes about the power of aunties and the trauma of being a POC in the us at, like, any point but particularly in the last four years. the heroine does a little cultural explanation for the hero, but for the most part her culture is normed into the book, leaving the reader to do some googling if they're unfamiliar with punjab/sikh/indian-writ-large culture -- good! i am happy to do the work of understanding that with which i am not familiar.

there were tons and tons of characters, which got to be a little tough to keep track of but probably more so for me than others because i like to predict who ends up with whom. i wanted the end to be a little more HEA than it was, but i am into this series and will be picking up the next one.