I saw this was BL and wanted to read it – then saw it was the second in a series and was mildly upset I’d have to work my way through another book to get to the one I actually wanted to read, then saw it was labeled as stand alone, and was happy again. Well, I’m not sure I really agree it is stand alone. there are an awful lot of references to characters and things that were introduced in the first book that go unexplained in this one. I muddled my way through, but the end result is I don’t actually care about any of the side characters even though they are clearly important to the main characters. “Don’t upset this dude, you know what he’ll do…” well, no, I actually don’t.
the prologue is also so over the top I nearly stopped before I even started. it’s basically Mother Gothel stealing a baby, but she’s so ridiculous it made me worried about the writing for the rest of the book. I’m happy to say she only gets maybe three POV chapters because I didn’t care for her performance. Otherwise though I really enjoyed the romance in this book. I didn’t really love the world building since it is set in a real place with fake fairytale-esque additions, but that was easy enough to ignore while focusing on the relationship. at the end of the day I really enjoyed this book and would still recommend it, though I would say it’s probably important to still read the first book.