One thing about Vasti that I love: her plots are completely wild but in a way that also makes complete sense. They are not filled w meaningless and random hijinks that serve no purpose, which can often happen with an over the top plot. She always has so much character growth and the dual POV here is fantastic. The epilogue!!!!!!

I absolutely adored the first in the series (will be one of my favs of the year, likely) and was fully planning to love this one too but something about it wasn’t fully compelling to make me pick it up - I had fun while reading but also often forgot I was reading it so it took me 3 months to make my way through. Again I’m not sure why, but it just didn’t catch me the same way her other books & novellas did. 

Overall tho still a great time was had! 

I really liked the first one, and yet the second one topped it!! I absolutely loved this one!! 

This time Vera’s vulnerability shone through, esp as she was connecting with her new friends. It wasn’t the classic somewhat annoying but ultimately lovable busybody vibes nearly as much as in the first one (don’t get me wrong, that vibe was fun), but in the second in the series, Vera opened up and shared her loneliness and fears with her new friends and it made her that much more incredible!

 Absolutely loved the cast of characters and shenanigans and the FOOD! All I want is dumplings and Vera’s cooking asap. 

And the two key topics (don’t want to spoil what those are) were addressed so well, and really shed light on the impact those have on people, especially already marginalized people. 

All in all, I loved this one, and can’t wait to see what the third in the series brings!! 

Among the best books I’ve ever read, and so essential. 

Wild that this could be summed up as “the real treasure was the friends we made along the way.” A fine conclusion to the series - the first was quite good, but the second and third were a little less compelling for me. 

This was fun!! As a resident scaredy cat, I thoroughly enjoyed this one - not scary except for bits and pieces and that was mostly pretty concentrated at the end! 

The premise was very fun, I enjoyed the commentary on race and how people of color are roped into doing even more labor for things like DEI committees. I enjoyed the addition of the hot school psychologist 👀

I certainly didn’t guess the ending - very unexpected! 

For the first 100 pages, I wasn’t sure if I liked this or not, but I was at a park and had nothing else to read so I kept going and I’m glad I did. I def shed a few tears when the difficult interactions happened with her grandmother with dementia 😭😭 As someone who listens to a lot of romance audiobooks, this was a fun peek behind the curtains. 

I quite enjoyed this overall, probably my second favorite out of the three I’ve read so far. I could’ve used more character development from Alex, he didn’t grow as much as Daniel did. 

The writing was so straightforward and plain that I could tell the entire plot from the first two chapters. I kept going for a bit more just in case there might be more than I anticipated, and there didn’t appear to be. Even tho I picked this up bc I wanted I wanted a simple romance to shut off my brain, it was still too basic for me. I also don’t enjoy the dynamic of “he’s mean to her bc he likes her so much” and “she doesn’t know why he’s means but accepts it all with a smile” which was the entirety of the first 30 pages. 

I did skip forward to read the spicy scenes - they are frequent and detailed, dang!!