I will admit, I went into this book with a modicum of trepidation. Conservative/Tory politics and policies have gotten more and more dystopian, so the mere idea of an across the aisle romance was hard to imagine, let alone accept. I read the first couple of chapters and then paused for a week, because I wasn't sure how much was going to be politics.

That being said, after I picked it back up, Calder does a decent job of making Harry seem like the best version of the Tory party, and a lot of his drive to become PM as head of the Conservatives is the weight of familial expectation. He's had to subsume his own feelings and desires in the pursuit of this legacy goal, which does make him more sympathetic, even from the outset.

But where this book shines is the attempted capture/kidnapping and their months long fight for survival in the Finnish wilderness. There, the political standoff is stripped away and they have to rely on one another utterly. (It's also kind of heartbreaking that the reason Harry is so adept at the skills needed to survive in the wild is because

he was tortured alongside his classmates at boarding school.)

Toby is given a couple of chances to save Harry right back, and honestly, I felt very similar to Beyond the Sea by Keira Andrews, in that I was kind of disappointed when they got rescued, because their bubble is literally burst.

The story inevitably loses some steam at that point, but I did like the opportunity for both of them to examine their feelings away from one another. However, the eleventh hour drama with

Harry's father and Toby's dead mom having had an affair

was kind of unnecessary. The more I think about it, the less it makes narrative sense other than to provide a literal momentary gasp. The ending felt a bit rushed, but it was somewhat satisfying for Harry to

rebuke the radical fascist wing of his party, step away from the Conservatives, and become Independent.

I had a better time than I initially expected, and was pleasantly surprised that the politics were boiled down a bit, but still felt the pall of the actual political landscape from time to time. But I do think that books like this, that show the best version of our world and dream that compromise and diplomacy is possible, when it so often feel out of reach in reality, can give us a bit of hope in darker times.