A review by avalydia
Angels in the City by Garrett Leigh

3.0

This was fine. I liked the initial banter between the characters, but after a while, it just felt like they were talking in circles all the time, to a truly unnecessary degree (eg, "What do you want?" "From this room, or from you?" like come on now, he's obviously not asking what you want from the fucking room).

It got to the point where I was wondering if maybe Sacha was neurodivergent, but the story never went there, so I guess it was just the dialogue. And it was especially weird because there were a couple of mentions of Sacha not recognizing a word in English, or trying to figure out how to say something, yet the way he was interrogating Jonah and turning his words around on him seemed more characteristic of someone completely fluent in the language.

I also wish the story had done more to address

Jonah being sexually assaulted by his parents' friend Ratner. It was kind of brushed off at the end as something Jonah had mostly gotten over, even though it was clearly bothering him throughout the entire book. I was expecting Ratner to appear again, and for Sacha to warn him off or for Jonah to finally tell his parents, but he never did and the subplot went nowhere.

That said, the dual company workspace was an interesting setup and the writing was pretty decent, so definitely not the worst romance I've read by any means.