TW: death of a parent; rape survivor (no description of assault on page); sick parent

This is the kind of friends to lovers story I like. The characters in this have been friends only for a year or so, and as adults, with it always feeling like the timing isn’t right. And it’s obvious they love each other to everyone but them. I really liked their dynamic. I felt they learned from each other, were supportive of each other, and complimented each other well.

This book returned to a lot of the things I loved about the first book in this series. I will say that I do think the author tries to push too many issues into one book at a time. This happened in book 2 and was completely distracting from the story, and didn’t flow. That element was still present here but it did feel more organic this time. There are elements of this series that are almost a little bit too on the nose and self aware when it comes to references by the characters to the romance genre. I’ll likely continue to read this series for characters that interest me, but not every single installment.