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marblepancake's review against another edition
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
lighthearted
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
Content Warnings
Graphic: Panic attacks/disorders, Medical trauma, Sexual assault, Alcohol, Sexual content, Eating disorder, Toxic friendship, Body shaming, Gaslighting, and Emotional abuse
Moderate: Toxic relationship and Sexism
Minor: Classism, Alcohol, Pregnancy, Misogyny, and Death of parent
crgrace's review against another edition
emotional
funny
hopeful
inspiring
lighthearted
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0
Content Warnings
Moderate: Toxic relationship, Gaslighting, Vomit, Body shaming, and Eating disorder
yarnarh's review
emotional
funny
lighthearted
sad
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
The amount of nicknames and duo pov makes it hard to follow sometimes. Especially if you did not read the book for a few days. Sex scene was ok. Not as graphic as what I thought with all the TikTok hype.
Parts of the story made me so angry though. Definitely check your triggers. It’s not that graphic when it comes to triggers, but would be nice to know. TikTok didn’t say anything about those…
Parts of the story made me so angry though. Definitely check your triggers. It’s not that graphic when it comes to triggers, but would be nice to know. TikTok didn’t say anything about those…
Content Warnings
Graphic: Alcohol, Eating disorder, Gaslighting, Mental illness, Pregnancy, Child abuse, Death of parent, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Toxic friendship, Toxic relationship, Addiction, Alcoholism, Bullying, Classism, Emotional abuse, Excrement, Panic attacks/disorders, Sexual harassment, Body shaming, and Vomit
mama_mia98's review
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
2.0
Oh boy do I have a lot of feelings and thoughts about this book. Unfortunately I let booktok persuade me into checking this out and I cannot believe that this book has as big of following on that app as it does. While this is not the worst book I have read, there are some major red flags within the story and characters of this book that I couldn’t ignore while reading. As with many smutty romance novels, the two main characters are extremely predictable and are walking romance tropes. With a possessive tall man and a petite and hot headed short girl, I’m sure you can imagine how their relationship develops and what their sex life entails. While the premise of this novel was fun at times, there were particular smut scenes and character choices that leaned why too heavily into toxic and harmful ideologies that I just can’t get over.
*SPOILERS*
Content Warning: Discussion of non-consensual sex acts, kink/smut, eating disorders and emotional abuse.
Listen, I’m not here to get on anyone for enjoying a romance novel with smut, I myself have read romance novels with smut and enjoyed them. What I will give people a hard time for praising a smut scene where the main characters non-consensually have sex in front of all of their friends. Booktok will not stop taking about the Uber scene in this book and how great it is….. having your characters openly have sex in the back of an Uber with all of their drunk friends and the Uber driver in the car is fucking weird. While voyeurism is a kink that is often present in smutty romance, it is truly insane to have a scene where your characters have sex right next to their drunk and non consenting friends/Uber driver and play it off as just a hot little secret between the two of them. Having sex in front of people who are intoxicated and did not consent to participate in that is not hot, it’s sexual harassment and it’s gross. You can incorporate kink into your smut scenes all you want, but you have make sure that you are doing so in a way that doesn’t perpetuate sexual harassment and ignore consent. This book is clearly trying really hard to lean into the whole “bratty /dominate” trope but does so in a way that is just extremely toxic and also very annoying.
Along with the questionable smut, this book has one of the worst characters I have ever read about and with that character, the author handles the topic of eating disorders so poorly. Aaron (the main girls skating partner and friend/roommate) is so emotionally abusive and manipulative. This man not only talks down to Anastasia and makes her question her own abilities as an athlete, but he also controls what she eats and is constantly talking about her body and weight in an extremely manipulative way. This man LITERALLY created Anastasia an extremely restrictive meal plan that he ensures she follows, even commenting on her calorie intake and how her weight was impacting their ability to compete as figure skaters. Anastasia is literally tracking her calories for this man and when Nate (love interest) rightfully questions Aaron’s intention’s, Anastasia completely blows this off as Nate being jealous. This reaction from Anastasia makes sense initially since she’s been living and working with Aaron for so long she sees him as a trusted friend who would never possibly cause her harm. But for the author to then have Anastasia spend the majority of the book defending Aaron continuously to Nate even after she has discovered the horrible things he’s said behind her back feels like an extremely strange way to portray this situation. To write Aaron as so manipulative and controlling and then have Anastasia continuously make Nate’s concerns about Aaron’s behavior about Nate’s jealousy really undermines the seriousness of Aaron’s manipulation and abuse and Nate’s genuine concern over his girlfriend in this story. You can have a conversation around toxic masculinity and jealousy in romance, but that doesn’t necessarily work when the other man is truly an awful and abusive piece of shit causing immense harm to the main girl in the story.
On the topic of eating disorders in general, I don’t love how this book handled such a sensitive topic. There’s a lot of Anastasia just describing how she’s not eating and how she’s restricting herself which can be super harmful for people with eating disorders to read about, especially with no content warning for this book. Also there’s no mention of Anastasia talking to her therapist about any of her disordered eating or difficult thoughts around food as she tried to heal even though the book makes a very large point about her going to therapy and being really good at communicating with and trusting her therapist. Having Nate be the one to “fix” her and create a new meal plan for her and encourage her to eat better kinda feels like we’re romanticizing eating disorders and undermining how traumatic and life altering they can be. While having support during the healing process can be extremely important, an eating disorder is not something that your boyfriend can just “save” and “fix” you from. There is so much personal effort and hardship that goes into struggling with and overcoming an eating disorder, and this book uses that struggle to fulfill a fantasy about some man taking care of their girlfriend in a way that makes this books coverage of this topic very shallow and self-serving.
I didn’t want this book to be bad, if fact I when into this hoping I would enjoy it. But unfortunately I just couldn’t get over this authors choices around these topics. Smutty romance novels don’t need to romanticize eating disorders or non-consensual sex acts to be hot and enjoyable. There are better smutty romance novels out there…. I promise.
Content Warning: Discussion of non-consensual sex acts, kink/smut, eating disorders and emotional abuse.
Listen, I’m not here to get on anyone for enjoying a romance novel with smut, I myself have read romance novels with smut and enjoyed them. What I will give people a hard time for praising a smut scene where the main characters non-consensually have sex in front of all of their friends. Booktok will not stop taking about the Uber scene in this book and how great it is….. having your characters openly have sex in the back of an Uber with all of their drunk friends and the Uber driver in the car is fucking weird. While voyeurism is a kink that is often present in smutty romance, it is truly insane to have a scene where your characters have sex right next to their drunk and non consenting friends/Uber driver and play it off as just a hot little secret between the two of them. Having sex in front of people who are intoxicated and did not consent to participate in that is not hot, it’s sexual harassment and it’s gross. You can incorporate kink into your smut scenes all you want, but you have make sure that you are doing so in a way that doesn’t perpetuate sexual harassment and ignore consent. This book is clearly trying really hard to lean into the whole “bratty /dominate” trope but does so in a way that is just extremely toxic and also very annoying.
Along with the questionable smut, this book has one of the worst characters I have ever read about and with that character, the author handles the topic of eating disorders so poorly. Aaron (the main girls skating partner and friend/roommate) is so emotionally abusive and manipulative. This man not only talks down to Anastasia and makes her question her own abilities as an athlete, but he also controls what she eats and is constantly talking about her body and weight in an extremely manipulative way. This man LITERALLY created Anastasia an extremely restrictive meal plan that he ensures she follows, even commenting on her calorie intake and how her weight was impacting their ability to compete as figure skaters. Anastasia is literally tracking her calories for this man and when Nate (love interest) rightfully questions Aaron’s intention’s, Anastasia completely blows this off as Nate being jealous. This reaction from Anastasia makes sense initially since she’s been living and working with Aaron for so long she sees him as a trusted friend who would never possibly cause her harm. But for the author to then have Anastasia spend the majority of the book defending Aaron continuously to Nate even after she has discovered the horrible things he’s said behind her back feels like an extremely strange way to portray this situation. To write Aaron as so manipulative and controlling and then have Anastasia continuously make Nate’s concerns about Aaron’s behavior about Nate’s jealousy really undermines the seriousness of Aaron’s manipulation and abuse and Nate’s genuine concern over his girlfriend in this story. You can have a conversation around toxic masculinity and jealousy in romance, but that doesn’t necessarily work when the other man is truly an awful and abusive piece of shit causing immense harm to the main girl in the story.
On the topic of eating disorders in general, I don’t love how this book handled such a sensitive topic. There’s a lot of Anastasia just describing how she’s not eating and how she’s restricting herself which can be super harmful for people with eating disorders to read about, especially with no content warning for this book. Also there’s no mention of Anastasia talking to her therapist about any of her disordered eating or difficult thoughts around food as she tried to heal even though the book makes a very large point about her going to therapy and being really good at communicating with and trusting her therapist. Having Nate be the one to “fix” her and create a new meal plan for her and encourage her to eat better kinda feels like we’re romanticizing eating disorders and undermining how traumatic and life altering they can be. While having support during the healing process can be extremely important, an eating disorder is not something that your boyfriend can just “save” and “fix” you from. There is so much personal effort and hardship that goes into struggling with and overcoming an eating disorder, and this book uses that struggle to fulfill a fantasy about some man taking care of their girlfriend in a way that makes this books coverage of this topic very shallow and self-serving.
I didn’t want this book to be bad, if fact I when into this hoping I would enjoy it. But unfortunately I just couldn’t get over this authors choices around these topics. Smutty romance novels don’t need to romanticize eating disorders or non-consensual sex acts to be hot and enjoyable. There are better smutty romance novels out there…. I promise.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Toxic friendship, Sexual content, Sexual harassment, Emotional abuse, Toxic relationship, and Eating disorder
lynini's review against another edition
emotional
hopeful
sad
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Sexual content, Sexual assault, Toxic relationship, Sexual harassment, Bullying, Cursing, Eating disorder, Emotional abuse, Gaslighting, Misogyny, Pregnancy, and Toxic friendship
Moderate: Abandonment, Body shaming, Injury/Injury detail, Sexism, Alcohol, and Vomit
naoise_gray's review
emotional
hopeful
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.75
Content Warnings
Graphic: Toxic relationship
Moderate: Eating disorder, Emotional abuse, Toxic friendship, Body shaming, Gaslighting, and Bullying
destiny106's review
emotional
funny
lighthearted
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Eating disorder, Sexual content, and Toxic relationship
Moderate: Emotional abuse, Body shaming, and Gaslighting
Minor: Death of parent and Pregnancy
kaitielou's review
emotional
funny
hopeful
reflective
relaxing
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.25
Content Warnings
Graphic: Abandonment, Alcohol, Body shaming, Death of parent, Eating disorder, Emotional abuse, Medical content, Toxic friendship, Mental illness, Panic attacks/disorders, Sexual content, and Violence
Moderate: Chronic illness, Cursing, Bullying, Medical content, Mental illness, Pregnancy, Sexual harassment, Body shaming, Death of parent, Grief, Injury/Injury detail, Panic attacks/disorders, Sexual assault, Terminal illness, Toxic relationship, Death, Gaslighting, Infidelity, Infertility, Vomit, and Medical trauma
booshort's review against another edition
DNF @ 46%
If I could give this book negative stars I would.
Someone please point me in the direction of the plot, I seem to have lost it entirely.
The Writing:
11% in, I had a feeling I wouldn’t like this book. I really should’ve trusted my gut. If you like books holding your hand through the entire process, this book is for you. There is not one iota of *showing* in this book. There is literally only *telling*.
There’s no description of any surrounding scenery, people’s emotions or expressions; there is only the brief description of each characters appearance when they’re introduced, but you better have a notebook handy, because it’s up to you to remember who is who after that. At one point there wasn’t even a physical description, the FMC was meeting the hockey team members and eventually just said something along the lines of “I mean how else do you describe a hockey player other than big”… and that was it.
Good luck trying to remember who is who and what they look like, because there is about 50 characters that have no reason being there. The author went about describing a group of people at one point leaving an auditorium because they were not-so-subtly called out and shamed by a school admin giving an assembly. We got to know each one of their names, what their situation was, and where they lived… and that’s it. That was the first and last time I had ever heard of those characters.
There is also an obscene amount of time skips, not altogether too long, but the POV character will just offhandedly mention having a conversation with another character “off-screen” so to speak, quite a lot. And it’ll vaguely describe whatever the conversation was, even if it was conflict that could’ve been added to the non-existent plot, it was just swept under the rug as an “oh ya and this happened, anyways…”
The “Plot”:
Now don’t get me wrong when I say this, I in fact am a large consumer of smut and plot-light romance books and I do thoroughly enjoy them; but believe me when I say that this book seriously has *zero* plot.
The “conflict” is the hockey and figure skating teams have to share one ice rink because the other one is broken or something. But they very quickly compromise and are able to build a schedule for both teams without really effecting anyone too much; all within about one chapter. Now everyone is fine, they get their practices in, they just see one another more often.
This all happens and is “resolved” within about the first 15% of the book.
The only other conflict I witnessed other then meaningless drama Anastasia created, was Aaron claimed to be beat up by Nate and he wouldn’t be able to skate anymore. Everyone backed up Nate when he said Aaron was lying, Aaron had literally no proof of anything, but Anastasia believed him. Aaron was skating the next chapter.
So like, why is this book 429 pages?
The Characters:
Jesus Christ the characters. None of them are interesting, the ones you remember are either extremely unlikable or kiddie pool shallow. I know some people are saying Nate and Henry are the only saving grace, and I could agree with that if they were actually well written characters.
Let’s go through the ones I can remember:
FMC/Anastasia: rude, mean, no reason for any of her actions. I get what the author was trying to do, I really do. I struggle with some abandonment issues myself, and I could see how some people would want to avoid it at all costs by being non-committal. What I don’t understand is her being able to pick and choose. She commits to being in a figure skating partnership and *LIVING WITH* one of the most annoying and abusive characters I’ve ever read (more on Aaron later). But can’t commit to people who care and want to support her in a healthy way. Ex. She’s about to go to funky town with our MMC Nate. Nate, responsibly speaks up and says he doesn’t want to have sex with her while they’re both drunk, but that he does want to have sex when they’re sober. Anastasia cries, pretends to go to sleep, but tries to call an Uber after Nate falls asleep. The next day Nate feels like shit, and Anastasia is mad at him. She just seems to be mean, lash out, tease, or cause drama for no apparent reason, yet claims she likes and is good at talking about her feelings. K.
MMC/Nate: hockey guy. Seems nice. I would hang out with him I guess. Deserves better in the love interest, and the writing department.
Aaron: blatantly harassed, belittles, and emotionally/mentally abuses and manipulates people. But *NO ONE* calls him out for it. And if they try to, or start to, Anastasia stops them, or gets mad at them. This man just flat out lies and Anastasia believes it because…?
Lola: stereotypical theatre nerd. Can’t remember anything else.
Ryan: fuck buddy of Anastasia. Actually might be the only side character I thought was written well. Not counting how he slept shirtless with a woman who wasn’t the girl he was dating. Don’t care if it’s right at the beginning of the relationship, if you’re gonna write sus things in your books, those characters better be explaining themselves.
Robby/Bobby: Robby is in a wheelchair but it’s only ever mentioned once. And he was kinda a dick to his best friend to threw him a sick birthday party. I have no idea who Bobby was, but their name kept popping up and I kept getting confused.
Rose/Briar/Kitty/Summer/Aurora/Liv: random women whose only purpose was to sleep with a guy. I think one of the names is unintentionally made up by me, and one is from the synopsis of the second book. I can’t remember which for each.
Henry: oh dear. Let me preface this by saying I am a professionally diagnosed autistic woman. Now, how do I put this without going into a long diatribe about autistic representation in media. I don’t think I can. So I’ll try to keep it to bullet form;
- he is an autistic-*coded* character. And a poor one at that.
- His only reason for existing in this book is to be autistic.
- He has no personality other than “I am blunt and speak my mind no matter what”
- Every other characters reaction to him flip-flops between “omg he’s so cute/quirky!”, “wtf he’s such a dick”, and “we must protect him :,(“
Safe so say I was not happy with this representation. If you’d like to read well written romance books about autistic characters, please read Helen Hoang.
If I could give this book negative stars I would.
Someone please point me in the direction of the plot, I seem to have lost it entirely.
The Writing:
11% in, I had a feeling I wouldn’t like this book. I really should’ve trusted my gut. If you like books holding your hand through the entire process, this book is for you. There is not one iota of *showing* in this book. There is literally only *telling*.
There’s no description of any surrounding scenery, people’s emotions or expressions; there is only the brief description of each characters appearance when they’re introduced, but you better have a notebook handy, because it’s up to you to remember who is who after that. At one point there wasn’t even a physical description, the FMC was meeting the hockey team members and eventually just said something along the lines of “I mean how else do you describe a hockey player other than big”… and that was it.
Good luck trying to remember who is who and what they look like, because there is about 50 characters that have no reason being there. The author went about describing a group of people at one point leaving an auditorium because they were not-so-subtly called out and shamed by a school admin giving an assembly. We got to know each one of their names, what their situation was, and where they lived… and that’s it. That was the first and last time I had ever heard of those characters.
There is also an obscene amount of time skips, not altogether too long, but the POV character will just offhandedly mention having a conversation with another character “off-screen” so to speak, quite a lot. And it’ll vaguely describe whatever the conversation was, even if it was conflict that could’ve been added to the non-existent plot, it was just swept under the rug as an “oh ya and this happened, anyways…”
The “Plot”:
Now don’t get me wrong when I say this, I in fact am a large consumer of smut and plot-light romance books and I do thoroughly enjoy them; but believe me when I say that this book seriously has *zero* plot.
The “conflict” is the hockey and figure skating teams have to share one ice rink because the other one is broken or something. But they very quickly compromise and are able to build a schedule for both teams without really effecting anyone too much; all within about one chapter. Now everyone is fine, they get their practices in, they just see one another more often.
This all happens and is “resolved” within about the first 15% of the book.
The only other conflict I witnessed other then meaningless drama Anastasia created, was Aaron claimed to be beat up by Nate and he wouldn’t be able to skate anymore. Everyone backed up Nate when he said Aaron was lying, Aaron had literally no proof of anything, but Anastasia believed him. Aaron was skating the next chapter.
So like, why is this book 429 pages?
The Characters:
Jesus Christ the characters. None of them are interesting, the ones you remember are either extremely unlikable or kiddie pool shallow. I know some people are saying Nate and Henry are the only saving grace, and I could agree with that if they were actually well written characters.
Let’s go through the ones I can remember:
FMC/Anastasia: rude, mean, no reason for any of her actions. I get what the author was trying to do, I really do. I struggle with some abandonment issues myself, and I could see how some people would want to avoid it at all costs by being non-committal. What I don’t understand is her being able to pick and choose. She commits to being in a figure skating partnership and *LIVING WITH* one of the most annoying and abusive characters I’ve ever read (more on Aaron later). But can’t commit to people who care and want to support her in a healthy way. Ex. She’s about to go to funky town with our MMC Nate. Nate, responsibly speaks up and says he doesn’t want to have sex with her while they’re both drunk, but that he does want to have sex when they’re sober. Anastasia cries, pretends to go to sleep, but tries to call an Uber after Nate falls asleep. The next day Nate feels like shit, and Anastasia is mad at him. She just seems to be mean, lash out, tease, or cause drama for no apparent reason, yet claims she likes and is good at talking about her feelings. K.
MMC/Nate: hockey guy. Seems nice. I would hang out with him I guess. Deserves better in the love interest, and the writing department.
Aaron: blatantly harassed, belittles, and emotionally/mentally abuses and manipulates people. But *NO ONE* calls him out for it. And if they try to, or start to, Anastasia stops them, or gets mad at them. This man just flat out lies and Anastasia believes it because…?
Lola: stereotypical theatre nerd. Can’t remember anything else.
Ryan: fuck buddy of Anastasia. Actually might be the only side character I thought was written well. Not counting how he slept shirtless with a woman who wasn’t the girl he was dating. Don’t care if it’s right at the beginning of the relationship, if you’re gonna write sus things in your books, those characters better be explaining themselves.
Robby/Bobby: Robby is in a wheelchair but it’s only ever mentioned once. And he was kinda a dick to his best friend to threw him a sick birthday party. I have no idea who Bobby was, but their name kept popping up and I kept getting confused.
Rose/Briar/Kitty/Summer/Aurora/Liv: random women whose only purpose was to sleep with a guy. I think one of the names is unintentionally made up by me, and one is from the synopsis of the second book. I can’t remember which for each.
Henry: oh dear. Let me preface this by saying I am a professionally diagnosed autistic woman. Now, how do I put this without going into a long diatribe about autistic representation in media. I don’t think I can. So I’ll try to keep it to bullet form;
- he is an autistic-*coded* character. And a poor one at that.
- His only reason for existing in this book is to be autistic.
- He has no personality other than “I am blunt and speak my mind no matter what”
- Every other characters reaction to him flip-flops between “omg he’s so cute/quirky!”, “wtf he’s such a dick”, and “we must protect him :,(“
Safe so say I was not happy with this representation. If you’d like to read well written romance books about autistic characters, please read Helen Hoang.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Emotional abuse, Bullying, Cursing, Toxic relationship, Gaslighting, Alcohol, Body shaming, Sexual content, Fatphobia, and Toxic friendship
Minor: Dysphoria, Eating disorder, Panic attacks/disorders, Vomit, Chronic illness, Infidelity, Injury/Injury detail, and Pregnancy
jaynovara's review against another edition
emotional
lighthearted
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
Content Warnings
Graphic: Toxic friendship and Sexual content
Moderate: Pregnancy, Toxic relationship, Eating disorder, Death of parent, Vomit, Gaslighting, Misogyny, Emotional abuse, Bullying, Mental illness, and Alcohol