This is probably the worst book in the series. It was way too long and a lot of parts of the story for this book kept getting dragged out. I started this in October 2023 and it’s taken me 5 months to finish. It feels like deep down I didn’t want to finish it as I lost interest. But finished it anyway.

This book felt like it could end the series. With the next two books, book 5 being what happened when

Grace and Hudson were trapped together at the finale of Crave with the missing time of months

, I have no interest in reading it as I simply don’t care anymore. I read a synopsis for the final book 6 and it feels like it’s not even necessary and I have no idea why it was written. I have a feeling it will just be more of the story dragged out for no reason. 

I did enjoy the series in the beginning as I thought it was exciting and pulled me in. It was entertaining to a degree, despite the extremely cringy writing. Honestly Grace is probably the worst character and she got worse in each book. At some point it felt like the author kept making things up for the sake of it and adding in a lot of filler chapters and random characters. This book in particular felt like it had a lot of filler chapters. There are certainly loveable characters (such as Macy) and a few others but that’s it. 

I’m relieved to be done with this book finally and unfortunately don’t plan on finishing the series. 

I think this was my least favorite book in the series (but still SUCH a great book.) It took a long time to get into the meat of the book and it dragged in the middle, but I loved the story and how it fit into the other books.

Nine. Hundred. Pages. For what?? Tracy, my girl, this is unnecessary. 
I said in my last review (covet, #3) that the writing was getting marginally better with each book and I’d now like to formally retract that statement. Grace has become insufferable, but it’s not ALL the characters fault, it’s just bad writing. Her internal monologue is so painfully repetitive that it’s near insulting to the reader. If an editor had cut out all the rendundant content you could literally remove hundreds of pages. Having finished this book, I wish there weren’t more. I will read them, of course, but I’m not overly happy about it. I will see this through! 

A few of the most heinously abused and repeated phrases in this book that I hope I never have to read again: 
“My Mate” - we get it. Stop saying it every other sentence 
“You’re ridiculous, you know that right?”
“Force a smile/grin that I’m far from feeling”
“Smile/grin that doesn’t reach his/her/their eyes” 
“Choke back bile in the back of my throat” 
“Laughs without humor”

Side note: for all the novels in this series up until this one I have switched back and forth between reading the ebook and listening to the audiobook to get through them quickly. Don’t listen to this audiobook - the narrator regularly gets the characters accents mixed up mid dialogue and it’s SO confusing. (For example: They’ll say something in Hudson’s voice that Hudson did NOT say, and I’d have to go back to the book to figure out what actually happened in conversation). There’s also continuity issues with pronunciation that is not earth shattering but bothered me to no end (for example, Mehki’s name is suddenly pronounced entirely differently in this book versus the first 3). I had to stop listening and just trudge thru this one the old fashioned way, this perhaps lent to me being more triggered by the writing 🤣

Such a roller coaster ride! So many losses and wins.
The ending was amazing!

This answered so many questions and honestly felt like it could’ve been the end of this series until the epilogue. I thought it was really cool that the epilogue held several scenes from Hudson’s POV, and that they essentially waited to have sex until Grace was over 18 (or at least that’s what I thought but maybe it was just very ambiguous fade to black). I am so sad that Calder, Xavier, Luca, Raphael, Liam, and Byron are dead. Such blows that I genuinely wasn’t sure I was gonna recover from. It’s been a hot minute since I read a book where not only characters died and didn’t come back but also that more than one character I cared about died. But Flint and Jaxon finally seem to be mates if not it’s very strained right now. I like that there were scenes talking about Flint prosthetic’s and Eden flirting with a girl, and the Non binary character Dawood. I really enjoyed them. Did not like Chastain at all.