Melissa

Have you ever read a book where you can feel the love and passion saturate every single page and scentence and word? Where you know the author poured their whole heart and soul and knowledge into their writing? That is this book.

Xiomara is an Indigenous Mexican archeologist, and Calehan is the architect on the reservation assisting with the building of a museum for the artifacts. This is a romance novel, where I feel like these two have set the bar now even higher of what a respectful and loving relationship should be.

Honestly writing this review is difficult because I loved every aspect of those book, from the culture (I love love love when books have passages on food and how food impacts the characters!) to really seeing what archeology means and what it entails and the side characters that fill out Bunchberry. But, of course, it is the romance that takes the stage here. Calehan is so wonderful and sweet and knows when to tease and to be serious, and I loved that they both felt human and had motivations and complex emotions and its so good!

! Spoilers!

There is a third act breakup, but it works so well here because the characters feel real, and the reasoning behind it feels so true to life. And it takes months! for them to get back together, and the whole time he is just being so respectful of everything and her choice while yes still trying to communicate with her, but not crossing any boundries!

I loved this book and have to do a reread soon as I may just have to break my fear of annotating.

CW: Grief, loss of a parent, loss of a spouse, racism

It felt like I was reading two separate books; a baseball romance where the world series is played in what felt like less than 10 pages; and a very spicy femdom romance.

The whole book is worth it for chapter 52, beautiful, stunning, wonderful.

I would have left this at 4 stars because it was a quick read and I did like the side characters, and the fact that both main characters are bi and it's just not a scentence and then it's never mentioned again. No the ex boyfriend is a significant player! It's great and I loved it!

No, we have to have a third act break up! Also the MMC was going to get traded to another team when they were almost at the world series but doesnt?? Why? This was frustrating

Also, Rookie, is used as a nickname about 74 times, give or take, but I counted. And I hated it.

Sara Cate books, to me, are like junk food, no nutritional value but are so good I can't have just one.

I loved how the religious indoctrination was woven throughout the story and that people in power will always be hypocrites when it comes to what they actually do. And even speaking as a former Catholic turned full atheist, I did appreciate that he still had his faith in the end and didn't fully denounce it completely as that would have been far too unrealistic for that to come about so quickly.

However, much like a lot of her other books, it suffers so much from telling us information verses showing us, or just giving us time skips with what have been good for character development. Another thing that I felt suffered in this is that they didn't feel fully fleshed out as characters either. I could tell you Sage likes tattoos and her book club, but what's her favorite color? What else does she like to do?

But much like Sara Cates other books, I eat this shit up in one sitting, as her books are so easy to read and comprehend. I want a book with the mother discovering her sexuality! We need more books with older MCs!

Also, the nickname Peaches is the fucking worst and brought me out of it every time.

4 stars because her stuff is entertaining, and I can't get enough.

I've probably been saying this a lot lately, but I dont know how to feel about this one. A few character motivations just didn't make sense to me or add up.

But it was well written and moved quickly, I read it in a day! However, this has to be said. To those who are comparing it to Ready or Not, the movie that came out a few years ago are very, very incorrect. To be upfront about it and possible !!!SPOILERS!!! the actual action happens in about the last 50 pages or so of the book, and the family is pretty much not involved as a whole.

I did enjoy it, but not as much as I wanted to.

4.5 rounded up to 5

I could read an entire series about these two, or even just the characters as a whole around Teddy's pub. I could feel the love of the alt punk rock scene flow through the pages, and the tenderness and care of the two main characters even more so, especially for the CNC scene at the end which many other writers fail to do. I'll make up my own story of Drew and June in my head. I am definitely going to be reading more from this author.

It may have just been my kindle edition but there were some formatting errors, such as giant blocks of spaces before the next paragraph in the same scene, but I got used to it.