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parasolcrafter's review against another edition
genuinely cannot stand theo like if he were a real person i would not hesitate to knock his teeth in. thats all goodbye
mila_readsmm's review against another edition
3.0
***3.5 rating***
"For a moment, Auggie wanted to tell him everything about Theo too. About watching the back of Theo’s neck in class and knowing the exact instant Wagner said something that Theo disagreed with. About the times he’d walked outside and headed toward Theo’s house without even realizing it. About the weirdest things that would remind him of Theo: the weave of the upholstery on the couches in the third-floor lounge; peanut butter toast; the sound of a page being turned in a quiet room. Mostly he wanted to tell Fer that he didn’t know what to do to stop hurting all the time."
What the heck was this book?
"For a moment, Auggie wanted to tell him everything about Theo too. About watching the back of Theo’s neck in class and knowing the exact instant Wagner said something that Theo disagreed with. About the times he’d walked outside and headed toward Theo’s house without even realizing it. About the weirdest things that would remind him of Theo: the weave of the upholstery on the couches in the third-floor lounge; peanut butter toast; the sound of a page being turned in a quiet room. Mostly he wanted to tell Fer that he didn’t know what to do to stop hurting all the time."
What the heck was this book?
meatloafqueen's review against another edition
5.0
Gawwdd so good!!
Gregory Ashe is so good at writing flawed characters. Auggie & Theo really put me through it in this one. They made such bad decisions (Cart? Fucking really?!)! Theo is such a mess!! Auggie, my precious baby! I was so frustrated with everyone, but in a good way because the characters are SO well written
I am looking forward to some romantic development moving forward (finally!!). I am a little nervous because Auggie is so young and Theo has some serious problems to deal with. I trust that Ashe will make me love them as a couple by the end
Gregory Ashe is so good at writing flawed characters. Auggie & Theo really put me through it in this one. They made such bad decisions (Cart? Fucking really?!)! Theo is such a mess!! Auggie, my precious baby! I was so frustrated with everyone, but in a good way because the characters are SO well written
I am looking forward to some romantic development moving forward (finally!!). I am a little nervous because Auggie is so young and Theo has some serious problems to deal with. I trust that Ashe will make me love them as a couple by the end
bookish_notes's review against another edition
3.0
This book was intense! It does deal with abusive relationships and drug addiction much more heavily than the previous book, so just be aware of that before diving into this story. This story takes place at the start of Auggie's second year at Wroxall College, and Auggie is staying at his fraternity house this year. Meanwhile, Theo is not teaching and is focused on working on his thesis while assisting a professor. There is a mystery at the center of all this, but a lot of the story focuses in on what Theo and Auggie are going through this year. They are seeing other people, people closer to their own age. But not all is well.
Content notes include homomisia, internalized homomisia, transmisia, emotional abuse, domestic abuse, sexual assault/harassment, mentions of rape, drug use, drug addiction, mentions character dying of a drug overdose, mentions of police brutality and a cop killing a Black girl, character dealing with grief, mention of a car accident, PTSD, riot, and violence.
Auggie is still building his brand and social media presence, this time branching out into a new social media app of 2014 - Snapchat. He may have lucked out with a room to himself at the frat house, but his old roommate (who turns out to be quite harmless) Orlando is next door and Auggie still manages to rope the guys into helping make fun little videos and the like. An important development in this book is that Auggie now has a car, but there's still a LOT of money being spent on Ubers in this book. Makes me cringe for Fer's bank account.
We do see Fer, Auggie's oldest brother, again at the start of this book and I love him a lot. He's more of a father figure for Auggie since Fer is the one putting him through college and the only sort of role model looking after his younger brothers, but I want him to get his own HEA too! Fer deserves the world. Especially considering everything he’s had to give up to look after Auggie and Chuy.
Auggie, now that he believes Theo is off-limits, has his eyes set on another college boy named Dylan. Dylan is slightly older than Auggie, but he's still an undergraduate college student, and closer in age to Auggie than Theo. I hate Dylan with a passion. He might be worse than Cart in this regard? Dylan is toxic and emotionally abusive. We only meet Dylan for the first time in this book, and hopefully it's the last. I don't think that's really a spoiler, right? We know who's the endgame here.
Meanwhile, Theo is dating Cart, a detective partnered with Theo's ex-husband. Their whole relationship is messy from the start. Cart is not out and has a LOT of internalized homomisia, no matter how much he claims he likes Theo. He also doesn't treat Cart right. If you've read any other Gregory Ashe books, he's only a hair better than Ammon from The Lamb and the Lion series and Tucker from the Borealis Investigations series, but not by much because the bar for boyfriends is underneath the ground when it comes to these guys.
Cart has his own issues to work out and I hate every moment he shows up on the page as boyfriend!Cart, so I guess his relationship with Theo in this book works to show you how great Theo and Auggie work together. Also, showing Auggie try a relationship with Dylan is another way to show how great Theo and Auggie are together instead. Is this what English teachers would say Cart is a foil to Auggie, or Dylan is a foil to Theo? I think that's what that means. We’ll assume that’s what it means.
In better news, Theo's daughter Lana is making progress. I do wonder how he's paying for her treatment since I don't think that's touched on much, but it was brought up at one point maybe in book 1? Lana requires full time care, and that can't be cheap, even if Theo has insurance for this. I'm not sure what the financials look like. But I'm just going to hope for the best and imagine this isn't costing Theo hundreds of thousands of dollars.
The mystery in this book actually has to do with Orlando. He asks Theo and Auggie for help locating his older brother, Cal, who has gone missing. No one else in his family seems particularly worried or concerned that Cal has seemingly disappeared, and thinks Orlando is overreacting. This case brings back memories for Theo of finding his brother Luke who overdosed from drugs, and Auggie's own brother Chuy who is a drug addict. This book is a TOUGH read in this regard. I also didn't like seeing how Orlando's family treats him. Orlando really is, like, the nicest person. I suspected him of being a murderer in the first book, and now I feel bad I suspected him at all. He deserves better. The ending to this mystery is shocking though.
We do see a lot of guest characters who we know from the Hazard and Somerset series, but you don’t have to have read that series first. Obviously, Lender is still around and in the thick of things, and I hate him here more than I ever did in the other series, but that’s only because we didn’t know how terrible he could be around people who…weren’t detectives?
Somers is around and he’s young and still very much in the closet. Before Hazard enters back into his life, we KNEW Somers was miserable (there’s a reason he winds up broken off from Cora after all) but I hate seeing him this way. As a detective, he’s trying his best but with only Upchurch as his partner, Theo and Auggie are doing most of the crime solving. I will say that Somers does sound odd in this audiobook because I’m so used to hearing Tristan James narrating the Hazard and Somerset books and he does not sound like that here. It’s just a natural downside of having separate narrators trying to cover the same characters who overlap different series.
A fun no-nonsense character we see in this book is Aniya Thompson, seemingly the only lawyer in Wahredua. She’s everywhere, but I love her. J.F. Harding (the audiobook narrator) does figure out how to pronounce Wahredua correctly for this audiobook, but he missed out entirely on how to say Aniya’s name. I didn’t realize it was her until I glanced at the text.
The audiobook is what it is. Not J.F. Harding’s best work. There’s also a few hiccups in the audiobook production itself like a line repeated in chapter 20 and then a weirdly long dead silence (20 seconds!) at the end of the audiobook. Minor things, but I thought I’d point it out.
I thought the story itself was suspenseful and a thrilling read, with a side of romance thrown in that had me wondering how the hell Theo and Auggie would ever wind up together. But you know what? The slow burn makes sense considering the age difference and how they met, and in the case of Theo, who only just lost his husband before the story began in book one. Theo and Auggie have a lot of personal things to come to peace with or just realize about themselves before they can truly expect to have a relationship together that can be believable. Do I wish they could’ve skipped the awful boyfriends part in this book before realizing they could be perfect together? Maybe. Those boyfriends aren’t exactly like Nico (from the Hazard and Somerse series) or Jadon (from the Borealis series) where I can see them all being friends down the line, considering everything that’s happened here. But I look forward to seeing what Gregory Ashe writes next for Theo and Auggie!
Content notes include homomisia, internalized homomisia, transmisia, emotional abuse, domestic abuse, sexual assault/harassment, mentions of rape, drug use, drug addiction, mentions character dying of a drug overdose, mentions of police brutality and a cop killing a Black girl, character dealing with grief, mention of a car accident, PTSD, riot, and violence.
Auggie is still building his brand and social media presence, this time branching out into a new social media app of 2014 - Snapchat. He may have lucked out with a room to himself at the frat house, but his old roommate (who turns out to be quite harmless) Orlando is next door and Auggie still manages to rope the guys into helping make fun little videos and the like. An important development in this book is that Auggie now has a car, but there's still a LOT of money being spent on Ubers in this book. Makes me cringe for Fer's bank account.
We do see Fer, Auggie's oldest brother, again at the start of this book and I love him a lot. He's more of a father figure for Auggie since Fer is the one putting him through college and the only sort of role model looking after his younger brothers, but I want him to get his own HEA too! Fer deserves the world. Especially considering everything he’s had to give up to look after Auggie and Chuy.
Auggie, now that he believes Theo is off-limits, has his eyes set on another college boy named Dylan. Dylan is slightly older than Auggie, but he's still an undergraduate college student, and closer in age to Auggie than Theo. I hate Dylan with a passion. He might be worse than Cart in this regard? Dylan is toxic and emotionally abusive. We only meet Dylan for the first time in this book, and hopefully it's the last. I don't think that's really a spoiler, right? We know who's the endgame here.
Meanwhile, Theo is dating Cart, a detective partnered with Theo's ex-husband. Their whole relationship is messy from the start. Cart is not out and has a LOT of internalized homomisia, no matter how much he claims he likes Theo. He also doesn't treat Cart right. If you've read any other Gregory Ashe books, he's only a hair better than Ammon from The Lamb and the Lion series and Tucker from the Borealis Investigations series, but not by much because the bar for boyfriends is underneath the ground when it comes to these guys.
Cart has his own issues to work out and I hate every moment he shows up on the page as boyfriend!Cart, so I guess his relationship with Theo in this book works to show you how great Theo and Auggie work together. Also, showing Auggie try a relationship with Dylan is another way to show how great Theo and Auggie are together instead. Is this what English teachers would say Cart is a foil to Auggie, or Dylan is a foil to Theo? I think that's what that means. We’ll assume that’s what it means.
In better news, Theo's daughter Lana is making progress. I do wonder how he's paying for her treatment since I don't think that's touched on much, but it was brought up at one point maybe in book 1? Lana requires full time care, and that can't be cheap, even if Theo has insurance for this. I'm not sure what the financials look like. But I'm just going to hope for the best and imagine this isn't costing Theo hundreds of thousands of dollars.
The mystery in this book actually has to do with Orlando. He asks Theo and Auggie for help locating his older brother, Cal, who has gone missing. No one else in his family seems particularly worried or concerned that Cal has seemingly disappeared, and thinks Orlando is overreacting. This case brings back memories for Theo of finding his brother Luke who overdosed from drugs, and Auggie's own brother Chuy who is a drug addict. This book is a TOUGH read in this regard. I also didn't like seeing how Orlando's family treats him. Orlando really is, like, the nicest person. I suspected him of being a murderer in the first book, and now I feel bad I suspected him at all. He deserves better. The ending to this mystery is shocking though.
We do see a lot of guest characters who we know from the Hazard and Somerset series, but you don’t have to have read that series first. Obviously, Lender is still around and in the thick of things, and I hate him here more than I ever did in the other series, but that’s only because we didn’t know how terrible he could be around people who…weren’t detectives?
Somers is around and he’s young and still very much in the closet. Before Hazard enters back into his life, we KNEW Somers was miserable (there’s a reason he winds up broken off from Cora after all) but I hate seeing him this way. As a detective, he’s trying his best but with only Upchurch as his partner, Theo and Auggie are doing most of the crime solving. I will say that Somers does sound odd in this audiobook because I’m so used to hearing Tristan James narrating the Hazard and Somerset books and he does not sound like that here. It’s just a natural downside of having separate narrators trying to cover the same characters who overlap different series.
A fun no-nonsense character we see in this book is Aniya Thompson, seemingly the only lawyer in Wahredua. She’s everywhere, but I love her. J.F. Harding (the audiobook narrator) does figure out how to pronounce Wahredua correctly for this audiobook, but he missed out entirely on how to say Aniya’s name. I didn’t realize it was her until I glanced at the text.
The audiobook is what it is. Not J.F. Harding’s best work. There’s also a few hiccups in the audiobook production itself like a line repeated in chapter 20 and then a weirdly long dead silence (20 seconds!) at the end of the audiobook. Minor things, but I thought I’d point it out.
I thought the story itself was suspenseful and a thrilling read, with a side of romance thrown in that had me wondering how the hell Theo and Auggie would ever wind up together. But you know what? The slow burn makes sense considering the age difference and how they met, and in the case of Theo, who only just lost his husband before the story began in book one. Theo and Auggie have a lot of personal things to come to peace with or just realize about themselves before they can truly expect to have a relationship together that can be believable. Do I wish they could’ve skipped the awful boyfriends part in this book before realizing they could be perfect together? Maybe. Those boyfriends aren’t exactly like Nico (from the Hazard and Somerse series) or Jadon (from the Borealis series) where I can see them all being friends down the line, considering everything that’s happened here. But I look forward to seeing what Gregory Ashe writes next for Theo and Auggie!
downtown_kb's review against another edition
dark
emotional
mysterious
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
School resumes after summer break and Auggie and Theo have had a falling out as friends. Theo has lost his privileges to teach and is now a TA and has been seeing Cart casually over the summer but things are rocky. Auggie is immediately sucked into drama with his ex-roommate and needs Theo’s help. He’s also determined to patch things up with his best friend.
I’ve never read a book full of so many dysfunctional people in my life. An exaggeration probably but still. Geez.
I am emotionally attached to Auggie at this point. I love Gregory Ashe’s writing. JF Harding is a phenomenal narrator. I will continue this series for these reasons but damn. Theo is trash to me right now.
I get he’s seen some shit but he’s an hypocrite and an abusive asshole just the same as everyone else in Auggie’s life at this point and uggghh. It’s not fun.
This book at times felt like unnecessary drama especially considering the way it ended. I felt that love confession came from literal nowhere.
Theo has some serious work to do and I hope for Auggie’s sake he gets there bc Auggie deserves the world.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Sexual assault, Gaslighting, Emotional abuse, Sexual content, and Toxic relationship
Moderate: Gun violence
aimora's review against another edition
4.0
Gregory Ashe I would like to request the next one please. I am obsessed with Auggie and Theo and even went back and re-read parts of Hazard and Somerset to get more of them now that I know them better.
explorebooks's review against another edition
dark
emotional
funny
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
erickabdz's review against another edition
2.0
At least I felt something, he thought. At least this time I felt something.
This was still awfully entertaining!!! But sadly I really didn't enjoy it as much as the first one. The mystery was competent but the protagonists just kept doing... questionable things... that I could (and did) ignore in book one because they were kind of justified, but in this one I just kept wondering ??? why ???? did you do just that ???? Also there were some things that were mentioned and I thought would be important in the plot but just nothing happened about them.
For example,
Spoiler
in book 1 Cart hided some information from Theo and I thought well, it didn't do much in book one but maybe book 2, but nothing. Though maybe book 3...? In this book, also it is mentioned that an office policer was shot very close to the date of the crime... Like these things might be nothing but in a mystery book I'm looking for clues!!!The drama, though, was very good and kept my in my toes, especially the personal drama -I am really invested in the protagonists' relationship and would definitely kept reading about them. In general, an excellent book that captures you easily. I really liked reading Gregory Ashe's characters and I'll be reading more of his work!
important tw:
Spoiler
abusive relationship, non-con.claudiereads's review against another edition
emotional
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
This was extremely frustrating.
alyssadokusho's review against another edition
5.0
[4.4~4.5] Gregory Ashe's writing is the milkshake that brings all the masochistic boys/girls/nonbinary folks to the yard