This book immediately is my least favorite. It doesn’t have as strong of a grab in the beginning and it just feels ‘off’ It attempts to tackle big subject matters too often and when it does it doesn’t feel well written enough to get away with it. Immediately it tackles alcohol abuse, but it feels spoon fed and tacked onto the story because it was difficult to care about it when the build up just wasn’t there to develop any care for that situation. Then it tackles sexual abuse, but again it doesn’t ease into the subject matter, it feels abrupt and just isn’t well written enough to pull off believably. Then it tackles trying to normalize asking about pronouns. It feels so jarring and strange because the series just never even hints at caring about stuff like that and then tacks it on when meeting a androgynous character. I fall into this category in respect to gender and being appropriate towards it being trans and I just could have done without it being tacked on so poorly. It felt carelessly force fed more then respectful. The romance is very tacked in this time too. It follows the same 2 primary main characters that we are used to, some sweet things sprinkled in here and there but you can definitely feel the focus move off romance and into the plot. The plot however is having a lot to be desired as i found myself too bored to care. Its too bad this book ended up being such a flop, the last few books in the series were so good! I won’t be picking up the next books in this series, I think the series lost its steam and at this point feels milked. I’m baffled with what appealed to people in this book with all these high reviews. Maybe spending more time with familiar characters is what I can think of that’s probably appealing to a majority of people. I felt detached after this book though as it’s poor pacing causes it to lose steam too often now.