It’s hard to put into words how beautiful this book is. Yasmin and Josiah are both such likable, mature, and real characters. They both make their fair share of mistakes and hurt one another but I understand why they acted the way they did.

Kennedy Ryan took such great care into this writing this story and wrote of the traumatic events with such grace. 

This book is an absolute must read. 

DNF at 60 pages. My Libby loan expired, oops! I’m enjoying it so far, just got busy. Added it to my home list again and will definitely finish. 

If you are a writer and a woman then you’ll probably love this book. There’s a lot of love for books (especially international classics) and some insights to the writing process. 

This book doesn’t have a really strong plot. Mostly vibes. It was pretty good. It was more romance than I was expecting (which is probably my fault—lovers is in the damn title) and I didn’t really care for either love interest.

I was rooting for the Casey and found her to be very relatable and likable, but I think the story wrapped up a little too perfectly. For a messy book, it had a very picturesque ending.

A really eye-opening inside look told from the granddaughter of the founder of the Children of God who grew up in the cult. At it’s core, this is a story about resounding perseverance and resiliency. 

There are many unsettling and outright disturbing practices by the Children of God that fosters an entire culture of grooming under the guise of sex positivity. 

This was fascinating on a sociological perspective. It’s really easy to understand how people are brought into the cult and how logistically difficult it is to leave. Even though there’s no excuses for the abuse given my members of the Church, I truly believe the members did not believe what they were doing was wrong (as evidenced by them changing the age of consent after finding out young girls were traumatized). 

It sometimes felt like the author was merely retelling events rather than actually reflecting on them, but I understand. I would love to know Faith’s current perspective on religion.

I loved this book.

I loved Chloe and Red so much as people and I loved them even more as a couple. Talia Hibbert really nailed writing realistic and flawed characters that are still extremely likable.

I’m looking forward to reading the next two in this series.

Very cute! I really enjoyed this book and I think it had really good pacing. The relationship developed pretty fast which I liked.

I didn’t know this took place over the holidays so that was a fun surprise since I’m reading it in December!

The physical attraction between Darcy and Elle were instant, but I think their friendship grew really nicely as well. I think they genuinely liked one another, which I know should be obvious but sometimes romance books lean too heavily on lust. 

Epilogues are almost always the same and not my favorite, but I think without one the book felt like it ended very abruptly.

Edit: lowered my rating from 3 stars to 2. The more I think about it the less I like it. It’s utterly mediocre.

A decent holiday read. 

Abbie is likable and nice but I thought she was too weak-willed and at (several) times downright pathetic. Damien didn’t have a personality. He only existed to give Abbie a confidence boost and “heal” her from her previous toxic relationship. Way too many sex scenes with cringy dialogue. I skipped them towards the end.

There is a significant number of typos and grammatical errors in this book. The writing is also very repetitive — like some actual scenes and conversations are repeated, making me think the author wrote it two different ways and forgot to delete one. The author mentions in her acknowledgments that this is the 8th book she’s published this year. Releasing books at that pace leads to a drop in quality and cutting corners during the editing process. My unsolicited advice would be to slow down and polish the books more before releasing.

DNF at 18 pages. Oof. I really wanted to push through to at least 50 pages before calling it quits because this book is overwhelmingly loved, but this really isn’t for me. 

The FMC comes off as condescending. Of course, she probably has character growth, but I didn’t get a good first impression. The college friend groups are repeatedly referred to as cliques or factions (with actual clique names to define them). I think maybe I’m too old to enjoy a book with “cliques.”

At the time of DNFing, all of the women in their respective cliques are metaphorically jizzing their pants and literally internet fighting over this new, hot guy. Come on, ladies. I personally never want to read a book where women fight over a man. *shivers*

Minor spoilers ahead but all of this happens in like first 40% of the book.

One of the main plot lines of this book is an accidental pregnancy which I don’t really like in books. That being said I do think it makes the story very different than the first of the series.

I really wanted to like Delora, but I just didn’t. I really like the rep she brought into this book as a fat FMC and also depression (she is NOT depressed because she is fat), but I just never really liked her. I wanted Delora to be more strong in her convictions. I found it frustrating that she carried all of this guilt and self-loathing for the murder but at the same time taunted the humans about it and didn’t regret  doing it.

My jaw dropped when Reia apologized for being a bitch to her and Delora said something along the lines of “yeah you were lol.” HUH? Reia was never a “bitch” to Delora.  She started out friendly and then rightfully was distrustful of her because she was looking out for Magnar who is her friend. And that even in the Veil Delora recoiled from Reia after learning she was deemed a bad omen by the human. 

As a couple, I think Delora and Magnar are just okay. I can see why they like each other but I think their connection is mostly sexual, and even at the end I don’t think they had a super strong non-sexual connection. Not that they didn’t like one another but, I don’t know, I think it felt like they both just liked each other out of convenience.

The highlight of this book were the scenes with Orpheus and Reia. 

I am obsessed with this book it was so good. It’s long but I never thought it dragged, if anything I thought the last plot line with the demon king was a bit rushed.

I loved Reia and Orpheus so much—both individually and as a couple. They are so well suited for one another and very adorable. We love a big scary demon that will kill any and everything to protect his human.

(FYI for people complaining about the grammar—the author is Australian so some words are going to be spelled differently than how you might be used to.)