tomi

Truly, Talia Hibbert amazes me with her ability to improve upon her last work each time. Each of the books in the Brown sisters series had me thinking “I'll never read something as good as this again”, and with reading the next I found that I was completely wrong! 

I can't speak to the autistic, sex work, and Vietnamese representation but I absolutely loved this!! Every line was written with such care and romance. The characters have so much chemistry, seeing it in this made me realise that that chemistry is missing in so many more works. An amazing read

i'm trying to fight the shame of admitting tiktok convinced me to read this but it was surprisingly pretty good!!

talia hibbert is the only person allowed to write romance

I didn't find that the chemistry between Khai and Esme was as strong as Michael and Stella but I adore them so much as individual characters. They definitely belong together and I love that they didn't marry until Esme graduated.  I really wish I could spend more time with them in their story!

i read this instead in one sitting of finishing my packing. it was fine but i should've finished my packing

An emotional rollercoaster from start to finish. I fell more and more in love with familiar characters and some new ones. I got very angry at other familiar characters. Spectacular writing from Leigh Bardugo as usual. 

a solid 70% of this book is just romantic pining, 30% heisting

i love the characters so much but this is the weakest book in the series imo

i found that the relationships started way too fast, there was no chemistry or emotional connection between any characters - we were just told there was. making that worse is that the personalities of the love interests was near non existent. the book could've really benefited from being longer and actually taking the time in universe for the characters to interact before jumping right into sex (which isn't inherently wrong, just didn't work here).

i do think i might come back to this, because i think i just didn't appreciate the pacing. but i did appreciate the trans representation.