I loved this! While it didn’t have the songwriting element that was my favourite from the first book, it made up for it by being so dang sweet. I loved getting more of both the main characters and side characters from the first book. Can’t wait to see more of all of them, especially Cassidy, in the next book!

This is, like. The perfect ending to the trilogy. So beautiful.

Sad Jade and Letha didn’t end up together but yay for gay Jade and her girlfriend!

An Agatha Christie style country house murder mystery! Lesbians with guns! This is what I want from a historical romance!

I absolutely adore Nancy Ann Healy’s writing. Yes, there is a whole lot of introspection, and yes the characters discuss the same topics multiple times, but it all feels necessary and organic. The characters are working through things, and each time they have a conversation it moves them forward. I love being so thoroughly immersed in the thoughts and feelings of the characters. By the end of the book I really feel like I know them.

I love a toaster oven romance where the character worked out they were probably gay years ago and then repressed that for years (so it truly is a toaster oven romance, not a coming out story) (see also Always Alex by Robin Alexander).

The Sick Dad trope in sapphic romance is prolific, and this one hit me hard.

When the dad died I burst into tears and said to my wife “Her dad just died!” My wife, who didn’t realise I was listening to an audiobook on my AirPods at the time, thought I’d said that my dad just died, and I was crying so hard it wasn’t difficult to believe. I then went to work and proceeded to burst into tears again while making coffee—this time happy tears during the wedding ceremony. Expect to cry a lot in this book!

First thing to point out, this book isn’t really a romance. Although it does eventually have a happy ending where the main character finally gets together with someone nice, for most of the book she is in an abusive relationship. It is a really tough read. While it is pointed out repeatedly that the relationship is abusive and controlling, and that her partner gaslights her, I do wish it were more explicit that her partner SAs her.

The second thing, though, and the thing I love most about the book, is the amazing and hilarious writing. The fact that the author is able to write an extremely funny book about such a serious matter, while taking that matter very seriously, is commendable.

Overall, this was a very fun and romantic adventure. There’s lots of imaginative world building and thrilling set pieces.

Unfortunately, there are a bunch of drawbacks. There are often huge blocks of info-dumping monologues. The pacing is all over the place—huge spans of time are spent with no idea where the story is going, making it drag. The feminist in me bristled at the frequency of the MCs calling other women bitches. And while the protective nature of Aurora felt romantic at the start, by the end it started feeling a bit toxic—Evie shouldn’t have to constantly watch what she says in case Aurora goes on a “protective” monstrous rampage against someone she thinks has slighted Evie.

Also, as usual with books narrated by Abbie Craden, I really didn’t care for the narration. 

The mystery subplot was fun, I liked the relationship, and I liked we got to see them settled into their relationship for a while

The writing just was not great and I couldn’t be bothered investing any more time in it 

I’m struggling to work out what rating to give this book.

On the positive side, I loved both characters and their relationship. I felt real love between them.

Unfortunately, their journey to that love felt kind of meh? It was like there were gaps in it. There was an initial attraction, then some stuff happened, and then they were in love, but the “stuff happened” felt like isolated, unconnected events, rather than an emotional journey?

Also, I honestly don’t mind when authors reuse plot elements, set pieces, or even whole plots and character arcs in multiple books! Some of my favourite books are ones where authors have done this! However, in this book, there are two scenes that have been reused from Stars Collide, and in this book they should be more emotionally impactful because the stakes in this book are higher, but they are just not. In particular,

the scene where Taylor convinces Natalie to go jogging wearing a disguise of a baseball cap and sunglasses is so similar to Anna convincing Eden to do the same in Stars Collide, but doesn’t have the same sense of panic, and doesn’t seem to have any consequences. It’s not until the final chapter that we find out that Taylor was mostly just upset that she thought Nat was putting on a show for the cameras, and Natalie wasn’t actually scared because she really was so focused on helping Taylor. Same scene, but handled so poorly. But the most ridiculous thing is that Taylor was Eden’s bodyguard during that scene in Stars Collide! She should know from experience that going for a jog in a hat and sunglasses doesn’t work, and it will just end up in you and your traumatised love interest being mobbed by pushy fans!

Anyway, the middle of the book felt a bit meh, but the start and end were good!