** spoiler alert ** I was actually really surprised by this book when I started reading it, and was fully prepared to rate it 4 “consider me surprised” stars because I came into this book fully expecting 95% smut and 5% story. I was thoroughly in love with Miller (still am) and I was really convinced that his backstory made him the submissive, under-confident man that he was. I loved the addition of the letters to his father in the story and his character development throughout the book.

The plot took a turn to reveal that Delane herself was a virgin about 75-80% into the book. That honestly ruined a good chunk of the story for me. I know it’s fiction, but where the whole plot is centered around Delane being confident and Miller not, I just can’t believe that Delane, being a virgin, is confident enough to put Miller’s cock in a cage, train him how to be sexually confident, and peg him without any sexual experience 😂 (Delane’s “experience” comes from listening to smutty audiobooks). She felt the need to hide her virginity from Miller, which feels to me like it’s out of character for an ultra “confident” woman like herself.

This isn’t a horrible book, but unfortunately that little revelation really soured things for me, and I’m bummed because I was really jiving with the story up until that point, even though there were some cheesy moments and at times the story could feel a little dragged out for a contemporary romance.

Edited to add: Something about this book hasn’t sat right with me for a few days, and I realized it’s because I feel like Delane took advantage of Miller’s innocence. Delane snooping through Miller’s letters made me feel like she still has no respect for him. If this book was a dark romance, I’d give this a pass because I feel like dark romance has its own playbook, but this is a contemporary romance. Lots of things that were supposed to be sweet really ended on a sour note for me.