I was okay until this motherfucker sang.

Stop. Why did I cringe from the first line itself?

I wanted to give it more than 1 star but then giving it 2 stars felt too generous to my hater brain so I just shrugged the thought away and proceeded with 1, and I clearly have better judgement than Ava Chen.

This book is about Alex, a grumpy morally-grey alphahole with a cursed past and Ava, a 'sunshine' sweet girl with her broken past that she could not remember. Ava's brother was really protective of her ever since 'the Incident' happened and when he needed to go to Central America for volunteering, he asked his bestfriend Alex to look after his sister in his absence. But now that Alex had shifted in Josh's apartment, next door to Ava's house, how was Ava gonna survive dealing with that grumpy scary man?

Everyone who told me that it was a good book deserves jailtime. To be fair, I knew I wouldn’t like it but being the justified hater I am, I needed valid arguments to hate upon and I successfully collected them. This book was just bad. It's fast paced with a lot of time jumps which were annoying because it felt like the author had just written random 'imagines' for her otp which was not fun to read. The writing style wasn't that bad but it wasn't any good either. I was cringing at most of the dialogues in the story. The story is told with a lot of flashbacks in between to show Alex's and Ava's memories which I somehow found annoying to read. No hate towards the unlucky kid but damn you guys irritated me as fuck. 

This book was really predictable, really. It's okay, some people are into that. I'm not. 
I've seen many people praising the 'thriller' part of this story so I think I need to mention that it was nothing extraordinary. The parents died, like every other character's backstory and the girl had drowned so she was aquaphobic when suddenly she started remembering that oh maybe her mother might not have pushed her and wow as if it was so hard to guess from the weird behaviour of her father that he had intended to kill her instead of her mother. Also, don't tell me that no one knew that Ivan was the one who actually murdered Alex's family. Bitch please, I saw it coming from miles away and this isn’t even impressive to be called a flex because when you're an avid reader, you learn to read between the lines.
The plot idea was good and had potential but the execution is cringy and cartoonish. Was that whole confession scene from Michael Chen supposed to be, idk terrifying? The man was saying dialogues like a cliché villain from 80s. And Ivan was so underwhelming even though he was supposed to be this grandmaster behind the scenes.

Now, moving onto the characters of the story…

Alex Volkov was rich and 'sexy' and a really fucking boring emo boy. You're telling me that man has an IQ of 160, has Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory, invented a new financial modeling software before turning 14 and it made him a multimillionaire before he could even vote, completed the Thayer's five-year joint undegrad/MBA program in three years and was the COO of one of the most successful real estate development companies in the country at 26? Naw, you gotta be kidding.
That man also knows Krav Maga, what the fuck? Apparently this man has mysterious connections that he would use the for the rest of the book to accomplish whatever it was that he wanted to do at any point in the plot or just threatening someone to give in. Also, people feared him at the age of 11 because his parents were killed and he swore revenge? Yeah kid, shut up and do your Maths homework.

Fact of the day according to Mr Alex I'll-murder-you-and-your-entire-family Volkov: Biological reactions can be mastered. Yeah, let's see how you master your diarrhea Mr Volkov. Oh wait, you'll probably never have one because you eat nothing other than vaginas anyways.

I know that some people find this hot and all but if a man is talking/thinking about me like that, I'd be creeped out. How is that hot? And that's also why I don't like reading the pov of alpha males in romance novels. This man was a creepy horndog who apparently fucked like a pornstar because ofc this man was perfect but then slut-shamed every man on the planet to have sexual thoughts in their minds. This man changed from 'The kiss was a mistake' to 'All that matters is I’m only sleeping with one woman from now on' real quick huh.

Okay, deleting the photos from the camera was a jerk move. Actually that whole bursting inside the room scene was cringy. He had no right to do that. What if they actually were having sex? That would have been so awkward and embarrassing for Ava. IQ of 160 and still doesn't know basic decency. And why the fuck are you freaking out over a 22 year old woman leaving her house?

Okay, I don't care whatever she did or however she was but calling a woman a slut jusr because she didn't want to 'breakup' was assholery and I'm mentioning that because people seemed to be in love with this man, at least on booktok and bookstagram. People, what is wrong with your taste?

IQ of 160 and still don't know how to apologize. Ava should have kicked his ass right there and then.

Now, I didn't hate Ava but I also didn't like her per se. She was just eh and well yeah, a forgettable character. I wouldn’t call her 'naïve for being too trusting', she was stupid. Just call her an idiot because that's what she was.

And then she complains about how everyone takes advantage of her.

The rest of the characters weren't interesting enough. Let me first put my mind around the fact that Bridget was a fucking princess of a country in Europe who was attending fests and parties with her friends in America? Haha yeah.
I felt some kinship with Jules. Yes I might not be the human version of Jessica Rabbit but it was hilarious how the 'fun' and 'fucked-up' ideas she came up with all throughout the novel were something that I have said at least once to my friends. If I'm comparing myself with Jules on the basis of her idea of having fun (minus the sexual things please) and encouraging others to participate in troublesome things, then my friends would definitely agree to the statement.
BUT!
I didn't like that stupid Operation Emotion phase, it was so dumb. I've mentioned that I had those same ideas as Jules at least once in my life but this stupid mission was just idiotic to the core. I've had these kind of ideas when I was a middle schooler, these ladies were full grown women.

Now let's talk about the main part of the story: the Romance.
First of all, I hate the nicknames these fictional men give their gf in romance novels. I hate it oh my god. How tf is being called 'sunshine' all the time not cringy for you?
The build up wasn't even there. It was insta-love and I couldn’t hate it less. Enemies to lovers huh? They were 'enemies' for three chapters and then suddenly they were stupid horndogs for each other. It was literally a flip of a switch when they suddenly started hugging and kissing in public and doing the usual couple things. They didn't even have a proper conversation about it.

I'm sorry, didn't you meet her like a week ago? Did this man go from not caring about this girl at all to calling her 'mine' and shit just because he saw her wet breasts? 

Yeah, I would be horrified by such a man by my side, even if he was spouting all that against my ex. These alphaholes need to chill. Speaking of which…

The relationship was so romanticised, it's bizarre. Alex literally liked to kill people, he was literally thinking of killing people in every single interaction he had with them and miss ma'am had hearty eyes for him.  Literally half of what he said were just murder threats and the rest were just him being over possessive with Ava and all that dirty shit. In London, when he was supposed to apologize to Ava, he saw Jake and got aggressive like usual and started threatening him and then with a snap, he started being lovey-dovey with her and she immediately forgave him. She had mentioned that Jake was a great friend of hers but she didn't even get mad when that alphahole threatened to kill her said friend? He was legit a sociopath. No, you can’t romanticise someone like that and call the character 'morally-grey' as justification. In real world, he's a criminal not a morally-grey character who's hot and sexy and just the perfect human with IQ of 160. Hell he even killed his uncle in front of her and how do you get back together with someone like that? Which brings me to the question, was Ava actually a 'bright sunshine sweet' girl? She didn't breakup from him because he was a murderer, she broke up because apparently he lied about his feelings. I mean yeah that's a good enough reason to leave someone but she didn’t even think about that 'murder' part for one bit. If a man followed me to the other side of the world and started stalking me and going after me every single day for months, I'd be HORRIFIED. 
Men. Need. Hobbies. Other than Stalking ofc.
Dude, she might be naïve but she was not a child who could not think for herself. Anyways, this whole morally-grey thing was just dumb to be written in contemporaries without the character being punished or face some consequences at the very least for his actions. These things are appropriate only in fantasy because those worlds are not ours.

Also, everyone had been gushing about the friendship group of the four ladies even though there aren't many scenes of the group in the book, let alone be called the 'perfect' friends. Honestly, all of those ladies deserve the 'worst friends of the year' award for not raising any red flag for Alex's behaviour, not even Jules who was supposed to be the sassy femme fatale out of the group. I'm sorry, does the femme fatale only lure men for sex?

Mom, I'm scared.
No seriously, this is weird and not the least bit of hot. And I still don't know how to react on 'sacrifical virgin waiting defilement'. I'm sorry I just don't like smut I guess, I might like it if it didn't have dirty talk I think. Nonetheless, reading these scenes was awkward and cringy and I just wanted to skip. I'm sure it's on me because a lot of people seem to enjoy this. Also, him saying that the women can't handle what he was into made me think that he was into BDSM and shit but no, he just liked it from the back.
Yeah.
Anyways.

I don't feel the chemistry between them. Personally, I like it when there's a good buildup and we can literally feel what the characters are feeling everytime they get to touch each other (not romantically) and you can just see that the two are longing for each other both physically and emotionally. But in here, I felt nothing  at all. I could only sense lust since every time they touched, he was hard and she was wet like please stop! I get the appeal of sexual tension but can we have touches that are romantic and sweet instead of always being overtly sexual and wanting to fuck each other all the damn time? I don't know if Alex and Ava did any sweet thing that people in love do other than sex since we never saw any of that. It was only told through an inner monologue and the things we saw were just sex or him being aggressive as fuck. To sum it all up, this was everything I don't want in a relationship. This romance could only cater to a specific audience and I'm happily not with them.

I had only talked about the cons of the novel because that's what I have to say. There is nothing good about this story, at least for me. I read it only because I didn't want to be the only one who had not read this novel and now I miss the time when I knew nothing about this. Honestly, after reading this book, I don't even want to continue with the series but a lot have been saying that the 2nd book about Bridget and Rhys was the best one in the series so I guess I will read it to find out.