Capitally Engaged was a meh read for me. The plot was fine, the Brandt brothers are amazing, and Preston was absolutely perfect. Jax, on the other hand, goes onto my “nope” list: she’s erratic, secretive, kind of manipulative, a user, and basically kind of a jerk. There’s only so many times you can freeze someone out or behave terribly and call it your “walls” in place. No, you’re actually just a bit awful. Preston deserved so much better! He was such a golden retriever, though it did get to be a tiny bit much sometimes. Otherwise the story was okay. I appreciated the DC-area bits, as a resident of the DMV.

One note about the writing style: it was oddly verbose with very strange placement of propositional phrases, which really reduced the readability and flow of the book. There were many, many sentences that I was trying to piece together out of the order written to determine what the author was trying to say. Some examples:

- I arrived twenty minutes early, wanting to be already situated as my dinner date approached, locking in for my own sake that I was in charge here.

- Tucking my phone away, the strain of leaving reduced knowing something to look forward to waited for my return.

- She bent down and put the hat back on my head she had knocked off during our enthusiastic celebrations. (This reads like she knocked off his head, not his hat 😂)

I received an ARC of Capitally Engaged from BookSirens. I am leaving this review voluntarily.