I received a copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

This was a SLOG and I just didn’t like it. The facts are these:

1. There’s a lot of broad claims made about people who use drugs, people who are homeschooled, the home life of bullies. None can really be backed up or quantified and straight off the bat it made me suspicious about what other broad claims about people I’d encounter later in the novel.

2. Not to be a broken record in consecutive NG reviews, but this book is also overwritten. The dialogue is often clunky and unrealistic, the subsequent dialogue tags unnecessary, and the narrative repeats and/or contradicts itself inside the same paragraph more than once, like so:

“With that question answered, Finn breathed a little sigh of relief. He’d stress over the kiss tomorrow. For tonight he was simply going to enjoy watching the meteors with Ivan and try not to freak out about the kiss in the process.”

Are you gonna stress over the kiss tomorrow or are you freaking out about it right now?? Make up your mind.

3. Internalised acephobia up the wazoo. Adrian, as the ace person, is allowed to feel less than positive about his own orientation, but as he’s not the POV character, this was a risky choice. Adrian sees himself as a freak and neither boy really says anything to change his mind. The energy is not “you’re not a freak, this is perfectly normal” but “we love you anyway” and those are two vastly different animals. I don’t recommend this for the ace rep. Maybe in 2016 it was passable. For 2023 it is mediocre at best. For this reason it is not on my ace-spectrum shelf.

4. Finn’s mother as a character was just wonky. Sometimes she was great and sometimes it was as if she thought Finn caused all the problems in her life. Then there’s the fact that Finn mentions how his mother’s fierce take-no-prisoners attitude about him being bullied at his old school was embarrassing, but then when Finn’s little sister starts DATING one of Ivan and Adrian’s bullies, their mother brushes it off? And he can’t possibly be a bully because he was polite when he came over for dinner?? MA’AM. PLEASE.

5. Finn “wants to punch Channing for ever looking twice at his little sister.” Charming 😒 You’ll punch him for dating your sister but not for bullying your boyfriend/s? Interesting choice.

In conclusion: the ace rep is average, the polyamory rep is average, the writing is average. You won’t miss anything if you skip this one.

My thanks to Harmony Ink for the eARC, and apologies for not finishing. I value my time too much to continue reading books that I dislike.

I'm always seeking out books that feature asexual characters, so I was really excited to read this one. My family visited a wolf center every summer when I was growing up, and I'm asexual as well so I really connected with the characters in this story. I appreciated that the three boys in the relationship had frank discussions about logistics of a three-way relationship, their limits, and what each were comfortable with.