WOW! What a surprise read!!
First I am thankful to have gotten the audioARC and the eARC for free from Netgalley and the author so I can leave my voluntary review.

I was out of audio books and needed one to listen before bed so I looked at ones I could listen to immediately and came across this. It looked interesting enough so I got it. Afterwards I saw that it was available in print as well through NetGalley so I got that as well to be able to do a tandem read as those opportunities don’t come up often on NetGalley.

Anyway, within the first 10% of the experience I dropped e-galley as the audio version was so engrossing and well done. If you follow my reviews you know that I don’t enjoy dramatic versions of audiobooks. I want the narrators to read with enough feeling to be engaging but not go overboard where it completely shapes how I need to interpret the material.

Well this is a bit different. It was a bit more dramatic of a reading than I typically like but it was fantastic! It was as though the female narrator completely brought the FMC to life and was so in tune with her. It wasn’t until I was 90% done that I checked out who the narrators were and saw the female was the author 😝.

So it makes complete sense now! I feel because she knows the characters best that she was able to be a bit more dramatic with the reading and come across as completely authentic. The author Emilia Ares is an actress as well and honestly that doesn’t always equate to a good audio reader!

Anyway, on top of the the recitation of the book being fabulous, the book itself was outstanding too! While the FMC and the MMC are 17 and in high school which fits in with the YA genre it’s not at all. It is New Adult for sure and it’ll speak to general and women’s fiction lovers as well.

I ended up listening to it in one sitting as i completed a project at 1.5x speed rate as it put it at a perfect speed. I definitely liked Mira’s chapters so much that I wanted Oliver’s to hurry up but his were very much needed to pull the story together. It was just that Mira’s were full of the action and you want to know what happens!

I didn’t realize that this is the second book in a series but can also be read as a stand alone. By the 20% mark I made sure to put the first book in my kindle library.

This book comes out October 15th 2024 and I highly suggest you preorder it now! I am 100% getting my own copy through Audible come October and a print copy. Now I’m off to reread the eARC to see what else I can get from this story!

My rating system since GoodReads doesn’t have partial stars and I rarely round up.

⭐️ Hated it
⭐️⭐️ Had a lot of trouble, prose issues, really not my cup of tea (potentially DNF’d or thought about it)
⭐️⭐️⭐️ Meh, it was an ok read but nothing special
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Really enjoyed it! Would recommend to others
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Outstanding! Will circle back and read again