romance is surface level, character development is nonexistent, writing is needlessly fluffy and don’t even get me STARTED on the cover

i loved the emotion and angst in this. the dual timeline was so intriguing and i enjoyed seeing how different and how similar Logan and Nicole were in both times. If you liked Shep from Cara Bastone's Ready Or Not, you will probably like Logan! The up and down of the romance and Nicole's life was a little too much for me at times, but i deeply felt for her throughout the story. Lauren Okie makes you feel everything with her writing - joy, despair, panic, love, laughter. 

with love & hope & baseball,

not giving this a number rating because i genuinely cannot! the first half of this was so different to the back half - it’s also somewhat categorized as a romance, which is FALSE! - which led to some confusion of tone/message for me. i think both of the narrators are so interesting and layered, which i loved. i do feel like decklee wasn’t extended a lot of grace or even the effort to understand her from our present day characters despite being such a huge part of the story, which is something i will be thinking about after reading. the ending felt quite rushed and while i really appreciate voris letting the mess and pain be messy and painful and the high school romance be realistic and healthy, it just didn’t give me enough after the whole book was building and building. not my favorite but also it’s really making me think, which to me is a good thing. 

really liked all the twists and different fights the characters had to go through! it was already pretty long, but i do wish there was a bit more done to wrap up and answer some questions (rune being able to See, harrow and juniper, gideon’s feelings on alex and rune, etc). the ending felt a bit sudden after the resolution, so despite hearing all about things being different and gideon/rune being together, we didn’t get to see much of it. i doooo wish we could have given a bit more gravity to the sexual abuse stuff. loved the romantic tension again, loved the arc of rune wanting to know herself and figuring it out. the whole “no we can’t be together i need to stop being weak/stupid” got a little old but then it was over (thank you kristen for knowing when to let it go) and i really liked the running away stuff and how it was a window into the characters real values and wishes. a fun read!! i love fantasy duologies!

the tension, the real enemies to lovers, the iconic horse, the period blood witchcraft .. yeah!

so fun!