I love Magnus, I really really love him, but this book is not a good time for his character. I read it, and it comes across as if his motivation for most of his antics and adventures in this book, is if someone attractive asks him to do something. It's tiring, and I hate that he's essentially being oversexualised because, oh yeah, he's bisexual (which cc loves to remind you of in her blatantly heteronormative way).

This is not the character that I fell in love with whilst writing TMI, and it says something that for her major Magnus writings, she has to employ cowriters to help her.

Magnus deserves better than his dialogue and scenes in this book. Gets 3 stars simply because the malec stuff was cute and I really liked the story with the drug addicted vampires and the Raphael story.

"I hope you find whatever it is that will make you happy."

What she didn't realize was that I already had, only I was powerless to hold on to it.

content warnings: secondary character death, alcoholism mentions, domestic abuse mentions

Strawberry Summer follows Margaret 'Maggie' Beringer, a small-town girl whose family own the local strawberry farm, and mysterious and devastatingly gorgeous department store heiress Courtney Carrington. After five years of no contact following their break up, they meet each other again when Courtney returns to town following her father's death. Following the timeline of their relationship, from the moment they met as teenagers, to the moment they meet again and beyond, the reader falls in love with them falling in love, and gets to experience the highs and lows they have together.

Holy moly, this book emotionally destroyed me in the best possible way. There was the perfect blend of passion, love, and angst, and I was completely enraptured from beginning to end. It's hauntingly beautiful, and the connection between them stays with you long after you've read it.

I really appreciated the flashbacks that we got (most of the book was recounting the previous seven+ years of their relationship) because it totally added to the emotional strength of their story and how much their reunion meant. I think without those flashbacks, and therefore this book solely being about their reconnection as both friends and a couple, it wouldn't have been nearly as good as it actually is.

I felt everything that they felt. I truly believed that Courtney and Maggie were the loves of each other's lives, and the fact that they got a happy ending made my heart swell.
This is one of those books I wish I could read for the first time over and over again because the genuineness of it absolutely struck me. Everyone in this book was real to me. No one seemed to be two-dimensional, and even the secondary characters had a warmth and depth to them that only a good writer could give them.
I welled up reading this, that's how much it affected me.

If I could give this more than five stars then I absolutely would. This is the F/F romance I've been waiting to read. It's crushingly gorgeous. It's heartwarming. It's absolutely everything you could ever hope for.

True Colors follows Marco, a young man in Berlin on the precipice of growing up, who is unexpectedly reunited with his childhood best friend, Oskar. Marco and Oskar fell out years ago, but their families are hoping that a play they are putting on will help them rekindle their friendship. Over the course of the story, it is revealed why exactly they fell out, and the feelings they had, and may still have, for each other.

The thing with Anyta Sunday, is that if you've read one of her books, then you've read a few of them. She has a toolbox of tropes - poor communication/misconceptions, mutual pining, hidden feelings for years/since the characters met - and she definitely sticks to her favourites. All her stories have a voice, but after a while it appears to be quite a singular one.

This book is enjoyable, but I feel like I've read parts of it before. Anyta Sunday herself compared this to one of her other novels, Rock, which is one of my favourite works. There is definitely a basis for comparison here. Like Rock, there is a certain 'quirk' that the main character has. In Rock, the main character liked to collect rocks and knew lots of facts about them and their love interest also had some sort of interest in it because of them. In True Colors, the main character likes colours, and each day and person and feeling has a colour. Their love interest also knows the code and what each colour means and incorporates this into their interactions.
It's sweet, but I've read it before.

If you like standalone M/M stories with a happy ending (because you'll always find that in Sunday's stories) and angst interwoven throughout, then you'll like this. It is definitely a fun and easy read, but I was expecting a little bit more from it.