This was a very fun book! It was my first contemporary ‘age gap’ romance. I don’t usually go for these but I was pleasantly surprised, maybe because it was sapphic and so it didn’t seem creepy like straight age gaps seem to be. 

I was hooked from the beginning with the characters and I liked the dual POV so we could see the inner turmoil from both sides. Even if Cassie was similar in age to Parker she seemed so much more mature compared to her, even if she was still figuring out life. Parker was so annoying and spoiled. She was very immature for giving Cassie the silent treatment out of nowhere for so long instead of just talking to her or her mom about the relationship. It was childish especially if she ended up being ok with it. Like what was the point. 

The smut in the book was not the best in my opinion, with the was it was written but the last two scenes in the end were much better. The scenes in the beginning half kind of lacked emotion it felt like, like it was just sentences/ actions. 

I liked the struggle of character growth Erin had because of her childhood and it could have been developed further in my opinion because it seems unrealistic that Erin would just stop cleaning excessively after Cassie calmed her down once. Like i understand she was trying to not let others assumed opinions get to her but to go from panicky cleaning to practically cleaning nothing seemed a little quick. I did like she was able to break out of that in terms of the relationship and allow herself to be happy with Cassie. It was nice to see Cassie succeed in her life as well with her job and such. 

Listened to the audiobook. Could not get into the narrator bc of the accent, might read it on ebook another time bc I do like the tropes in it.

This was my first ARC! This is my unbiased review. 

This book wasn’t necessarily bad but it wasn’t great either. I liked the feminist thinking from the FMC but it was a little overdone at times. What I did not like was the indecisiveness of the FMC and later in the book was putting herself continuously in danger because she ‘wanted to help.’ And then she needed to be saved every time.  The writing lacked some descriptions, like it went a little to quickly from one thing to the other at times, especially in the beginning when Amara was first banished to the above ground. 

I wish we had more time in the underground world as it felt more built out than above, and I understand the FMC learning as she went on but there was little world building; it felt like we were suppose to know the world from just looking at the map. 

The romance was very cute and at least personally the betrayal did not feel that egregious to me.

Lke it seemed like he had truly fallen for her even if he was trying to fake it in the beginning. The friendship with the maid was my favorite.

The points for the gorgeous cover tho. And the surprise biting kink?