The writing was incredible. I felt like it was flowery, romantic, poetic. Sometimes a little wordy. I think a little more editing probably could have easily cut back the book by a few unnecessary hours and not lose all that flowery storytelling. For the first time I had to up the speed to 2x and sometimes 3x because there was so much wordiness that it got repetitive. I was getting a little tired with all these pretty unnecessary words when I really just wanted plot and romance. I havnt experienced a book like this in a while and so glad i gave this a try. I was obsessed with the writing style with its frequent use of flashbacks, emotional sentences getting repeated and some great descriptive feelings. The world building was a little lacking. This is fine though because the entire focus of this book is on the characters and the slow burn romance. So your barely get a brief outline of the outside conflicts, the wolves background and the magic system isn’t even barely acknowledged. I felt like this hopefully will be built on in the next book. This book already felt entirely too long with the poetic writing style and I stuffing in world building would have been a bit much with this kind of writing. Where the world building lacked the characters though made up for it significantly. You get 2 amazing main romantic characters from childhood into adulthood so you can experience so much of their upbringing and internal dialog. The side characters also end up being super amazing after they get more and more involved. The plot was weird though in that there felt like a overarching plot was happening besides the romantic plot but it sometimes had trouble staying focused. Again I feel like this is due to to flowery writing style used a lot of artistic choices to zoom in and out of the plot and descriptions felt like diary entries when the plot was moving around. The romantic plotline was fun but a bit same-same. Definitely a insta-love, fated mate trope that you’re likely familiar with already if you’re into shifter books but this book does it differently by again using a unique style of writing to spice it up. You won’t get anything new though from the content. The familiar tropes and plot though makes this an easier read to follow along to with the different writing style. The book had a few funny moments to lighten up the romantic, sometimes emotionally intense relationship building. It’s not a funny book though as the book does consistently have darker, sad themes. There is 2 spicy scenes that make sense with the romance. They are descriptive, intense and worth the slow burn you dealt with to get to it. These two needed to grow up before being able to do anything spicy since the book literally starts with them as kids and it takes nearly 80% of the book for them to be old enough for this to be appropriate. I didn’t mind the wait to get to the spicy bits because I was so captivated by the story. This is rare for me as I usually lose my patience because the thirst is real. I sometimes wish I could get more of the spicy bits shined on to know and experience more of what the built up to. Highly recommend this book to anyone needing a strong and honest romantic experience.