Plot : ⭐⭐
Story :⭐⭐⭐ (only for the effort put into writing this 600 page paperback)
Spice : 🌶️
Rating : ⭐⭐

Tropes : strangers to benefits to enemies to lovers? If that is even a thing, contemporary, touch her and die.
Pacing : slow. (The book was dragged at times, and i couldn’t find any reason to like it)

Characters : okay, so i’ll summarise the story, or try to. The story starts with summer attention her parent’s party which is whit’s father and her mother, and what does he do when he meets her, he kisses her and calls her a whore, refering to her mother. He blames the wreckage of his parent’s marriage on summer. And don’t —
This girl, summer she’s folding to whit’s seduction, even if he’s the one who humiliates her in the worst way possible, he asks the entire school to torture her, because he hates her, and only stops when summer is ready to exchange sexual favours for the bullying to stop. Annoying. On top of that, there’s nothing but summer hanging out with sylvie— his sister, and then f•••••• every chance they get. Also, whit is such an asshole, he f•••• her and then throws her away as if she didn’t mean anything. This wasn’t dark, it was rude, and unsatisfying. There’s was no redemption arc for whit, if he was sexually anything good, maybe i’d have loved this book, but it kept grating on my nerves, also 640 pages?? Please. Then, at the ending chapters, there’s a tiny bit of character development, only for whit though, which quickly gets crushed because he’s still the same asshole who called summer names and made sure her life was hell. And then jumped to save her, he also blames her for wearing a revealing dress and ”wearing a dress like that, what did you expect?” see I can expect assholeness from my MMC’s, if they are any good at loving the FMC in any way, even landon king, the infuriating prick from Rina kent’s universe was better. There was nothing in this book that i could have loved. In the epilogue, they have a kid, and they name him August, after whit’s father’s name, calling it tradition of passing names, this couple— i swear, young adult couples can do better, but what is this?

What I loved : only monty’s parts, Sylvie and summer’s parts.
What I struggled with : the plot. Honestly, this 640 pages of a book didn’t need to be this long.

Loveable characters or not : no.

Strong character development : no.
Plot driven / character driven : my motivation to finish this book, instead of dnf— ing it.

Favorite quotes/ highlights : none..

Any other details : i tried to like this book, but i just couldn’t, maybe some other day, which is not today. The notes on the cover are reference to the journal whit steals because he doesn’t like showing weakness. This boy, yes, boy. Not a man was annoying in all ways possible. I understand the negative reviews now, and am seriously contemplating if I should other books in this series.