I've liked a lot of Jennifer Dugan's books, so I was pretty excited to read this one! 

Overall, I thought the book was ok. I'm just not sure it was for me - especially for the first 3/4 of it. With the risk of sounding like a completely awful person, I found Ridley to be really annoying. I know he was very poorly mistreated and had lots of mental health issues like depression and severe anxiety, but I started getting really annoyed that he couldn't see how his sister, Gray, or Jubilee cared about him. He'd blow them off, and while I know that's the voice in his head that was conditioned by his abusive parents, it was hard for me to read. Probably because this hits a bit close to home in my own personal life in which I'm the Jubilee character. So in that case, I found this portrayal of Ridley very accurate and spot on.

Ridley also put Jubilee in some really awful positions, and I didn't really find their relationship to be romantic, cute, or exciting because I kept seeing all these red flags. Their relationship was really toxic.

I'm happy to say that this was addressed in the last quarter of the book, and I've never been so happy to have a couple break up because they recognized that the relationship wasn't healthy. Ridley needed to better himself first before being in a relationship, and I'm happy that the ending (while they weren't together) had hopes of them reconnecting and starting over in a healthy way that wasn't focused on lies, emotional manipulation, and toxic obsessions.

Even though I found Ridley to be quite annoying and I was getting frustrated with him, he redeemed himself.

The fact that he finally accepted Gray's help as well as getting professional help was HUGE! It showed real growth and an initiative to change his life for the better.

I think this is an important book that addresses mental health issues - especially as it relates to relationships. I cared about these characters and wanted them to grow, and they certainly did.