The bad: I’m not a fan of instalove and this sure is that. I’m not super clear why the main characters like each other so much but whatever, it’s the genre. Also, the age and power difference is a wee bit creepy so I just pretended that wasn’t happening.
The good: I really appreciated the treatment of alcohol use disorder in the book. I have spent quite a bit of time interacting with that subject professionally and personally and it rings true. I like that even magical detox can go awry. The book is mostly story, lots of mystery and action and character development which I prefer. Not just a sorry excuse for exploitative porn that is so much of this genre. Also enjoyed the normalizing of a nonbinary character. Not preachy, just you know, here’s another pronoun that exists in the world.