When I discovered that Lalah is a reader girlie, I started to love her character. She is confident and knows what she wants. When she creates her dream house, I want to steal it. I will gladly take that state-of-the-art security system and that beautiful giant library.

This book seems like it is trying a bit too hard to set up the plot and establish the characters for the entirety of the rest of the series. As a result, trying to learn about every single character relevant to the town is a lot for readers to process. It's okay to not know the characters in book five all the way from book one. Even in a small town, not every person in town will be connected to one another directly. I would've loved to see the web built out over the course of the series instead of being aggressively peppered in throughout the first book. 

I was shocked to see how happy I was with Lalah and Cole's instalove attitude. It was quite funny many different moments. Including the extreme caveman energy of many of the guys in town. 

This book in total is over 500 pages. Surprisingly I don't think those pages were waste. That said, I would've loved to see it trimmed down at least 100 pages. Perhaps that is mostly due to my short attention span. 

The found and thrown-together family works incredibly well together. It truly seems like they were all destined to have a life as a family. 

Please do keep in mind this book does have a decent amount of spice. It would be difficult to skip so I do not recommend this book to those not interested in or uncomfortable with spice. In addition, please review the trigger warnings before diving into this book because it does cover some heavier topics. 

Overall I quite enjoyed reading this story. The fond family, funny bonds, and host of solid characters make it stand out. Going forward, I hope the rest of the series is slower to introduce new characters.

I received this book as part of an arc team. My review is honest and voluntary 

For a more in-depth review please see my blog:  https://readintowonderland.blogspot.com/2024/03/lege-et-lacrima.html