This is a book that I will be thinking about for a long time. It was a melancholic but still a comforting read.

A fine conclusion to the series. With each installment I've enjoyed it a little less than the previous one, but it was still a good reading experience and I would recommend this series to anyone who wants a lighthearted graphic novel to read.

I flew through this, it felt super easy to read and really liked the discussion and depiction of mental health in this story.

While the big reveal felt a little anticlimactic, overall I felt satisfied with how things wrapped up in the final book. Learning about new types of codes and following a mystery is always fun, but for me the biggest draw to this series has been the main character Christopher and the relationships he has with the people closest to him. 

If you don't like books open endings, this is not the book for you. If you like books that have themes of a story within a story or stories that seem unconnected unraveling to reveal that there is a common thread running throughout unbeknownst to even the characters, I would recommend giving this book a try. This book also had beautiful prose, and even while I was not sure where the story was headed I appreciated the reading experience all the same. The story does give enough clues for the reader to draw conclusions about what's really going on, but it did still feel slightly too open ended for my personal taste.

I think I wanted to love this book I a lot more than I actually did. I don't think this is a bad book at all, I just think the romance specifically included certain tropes that I'm not a fan of, so it just came down to personal preference. But I loved the writing, and how well established the setting felt and incorporated into the story. This was my first Beverly Jenkins, and I am looking forward to checking out her other work. 

To be honest, for a majority of the reading experience, I felt confused and unable to connect with the story, but after having finished it I can say it came  together beautifully in the end. In fact, I think the strength of this book lies in its ambiguity. In my opinion, the author did a great job of bringing up meaningful themes and conversations, while leaving things open-ended enough for the reader to come to our own conclusions. I'd be interested to see if the re-released version differs that much from the original publication, as I read the version of the book that was originally released in 2013. I already had the author's other works on my tbr, but I'm definitely going to try make them a priority going forward.

For this first 85% of this book, I felt... fine. I liked the story and the characters, but only superficially and everything about this book felt surface-level. So while I knew it wouldn't be an all time fave, I still liked it well enough- until the last 15% happened. It's almost as if there is a third-act break fake out that lulls you into lowering your defenses because you think it won't actually happen, only to turn around and happen in a way felt unnecessary. Because of this the book ended on a sour note for me, even though I was having a fun time for most of the book.

I liked what we got of the world building, and how the main character subverted my expectations in terms what I thought her motivations would be behind her actions. On the other hand, the ending felt very abrupt, and I feel like some aspects of the story could have been slightly more fleshed out. 

 Edit: The Harper Collins strike has ended; review is now added in
I was feeling apprehensive at first because the book got off to a slow start, but after the first handful of chapters things really picked and I was having a lot of fun. The reason for the fake dating felt a little bit forced but that could just be me becoming less and less convinced by the fake dating trope over the years, in general. This book was so engaging that it made me not mind certain romance tropes that I usually dislike. It was genuinely funny, did a great job of convincing me why the two main characters were meant for each other, and even the side characters felt like they had depth and were fleshed out.

Previously:
In solidarity with the HarperCollins Union, I will not be posting a rating or a review of Honey & Spice here on Storygraph or anywhere else until HarperCollins proves that they care about their workers and listens to the demands of the Union, and until the strike is over. When the strike is over, I will then edit this review with my thoughts about the book.

In case this is the first time you are hearing about this strike, here is a link that will take you to all the necessary information you need to learn about the strike, why the strike is happening, and what steps you can take to help: https://linktr.ee/hcpunion