JJ

What a delightful read! Perfect combination of humor and hurt/comfort. I love Tam's prickly personality (Nicolau was right that he is a cat), and he had me giggling throughout. This is one of the few books I'd enjoy rereading at some point.

Everything I want in a book! It'd be perfect if not for the need for better editing.

I hate-read this book. I should've known better than to read an m/m by an author who mostly writes m/f. I'd hoped since it's so popular, it'd at least be decent, but I was honestly surprised at how awful it is.

It's dual 1st person POV, and every page is full of repetitive inner monologue - Nikolai's is about how unhinged, violent, horny, and obsessed with Brandon he is, and Brandon's is about how much he hates himself, how distant he is from others, how much he has to be in control, and how Nikolai is fucking with that. 600+ pages of that over and over and over, interspersed with lots of smut, with no actual plot in sight. It's like listening to two uninteresting narcissists drone endlessly about themselves for hours.

Don't get me wrong, I love a good character-driven story where the reader digs deep into a character's psyche, feels like they really get to know them, and falls in love with them, without the need for much of a plot outside of their relationship development. This was not that. Nearly every character is astonishingly stupid with no redeeming qualities. You can't just say the character is really hot and likes to beat the shit out of people and kill them violently for no reason, yet loves this one person and treasures them, and assume that makes them a complex morally gray/black enigma. It's lazy and simplistic, and you end up with two dimensional characters with zero depth.

I was hoping that the big reveal about Brandon's trauma would somewhat redeem this book, but no. The way that it was revealed could not be dumber. His rapist had filmed herself raping him and SENT NIKOLAI VIDEO PROOF OF THE RAPE FOR NO GOD-DAMNED REASON. So of course he ends up killing her! Why the FUCK would anyone give a violent psychopath a video of themselves raping his boyfriend while he screamed?! No one on Earth is that stupid. I refuse to believe it. It makes NO SENSE WHATSOEVER. Absolutely infuriating and makes me want to pull my hair out.

Speaking of pulling hair, at one point Brandon's twin, who is also supposed to be a sexy badass, yanks Brandon's ex-gf out of the room by her hair after Brandon broke up with her and wanted her to leave. Then later, after Nikolai invites her to his penthouse for sex to make Brandon jealous, Brandon walks in and yanks her up by her hair as she's about to give Niko a BJ. What the fuck is with the hair pulling?? She wasn't even doing anything wrong! She was newly single and had been invited to fuck by some guy she assumed was also single! Violence against women is not sexy and does not make these men look badass. Fuck all the way off with that shit.

I'm so glad I borrowed from the library rather than spending money on this garbage. For anyone who wants to read good books with morally gray anti-heroes, check out any of these:

Twisted Web series by H.L. Night

Magpie Rhyme series by Louise Collins

The Husky and His White Cat Shizun by Rou Bou Bu Chi Rou

More Heat Than the Sun series by John Wiltshire

The Administration series by Manna Francis

This is such an entertaining series that has both light-hearted and emotionally heavy moments. I love Rick and Max and their weirdness.

Absolutely brutal. Tore my heart to shreds. It forces you to acknowledge the reality of the unspeakable horrors of war. I've never cried so frequently throughout an entire book. Henry and Sidney are precious to me, and will forever remain in my heart.