I am a puddle. A love-for-this-book pile of goo. This book was amazing!! And I am not okay.

This was an Amanda book. A capital-M Messy marriage of convenience story, a bit slow burn, with a neurodivergent heroine and an excellent reformed rake hero’s character arc.

This was the best neurodivergent MC book I’ve ever read. Harry (Harriet) wasn’t the kind of person with autism who could easily ‘pass’. She stimmed, she avoided eye contact, she didn’t get small talk, and her hyper-focus on mathematics negatively impacted her sleep, her eating habits, her health, and let’s face it, her appearance.

This story hit me right in my Achilles heel: MCs with autism who have loving and supportive friends and family. And the most important part: they didn’t love her because she was ‘special’—they loved her because, once the initial shock of her neurodivergence wore off and they understood the meaning behind her a-typical interactions, they loved her for herself. 

I loved the journey of this marriage of convenience story. Harry and our hero Thomas felt absolutely nothing for each other when they got married. Thomas was an impoverished peer, Harry was an heiress. Thomas didn’t want to inflict his rakish lifestyle on someone who could be hurt by it, Harry wanted the tranquility of a country estate to pursue her dreams in mathematics. 

(Sidenote: this is what’s meant by the TW “consensual non-monogamy.” I don’t think this element of the story crossed any lines and I actually loved the messy drama of it all.)

And this reformed rake story was god-tier. There’s just something about a (for real) rake who becomes absolutely torn up with love for his wife that annihilates me with the juicy angst. Especially with everything else that was going on in this story. And the character arc of how and why he went from rake to reformed rake was *chef’s kiss* perfection. 

I just loved this romance plot. It was complicated and intimate, and you kinda just had to be there.

Also, a birch tree 😭