Thank you to the author and Booksirens for allowing me the opportunity to read this story as an eARC. Despite my rating, it means a lot to me and even though this wasn't for me, I know many other people will enjoy this story.

I wanted to love this book so much. I always love finding new love stories that are centred around Black/African people and along with the gorgeous cover, the premise intrigued me. Unfortunately, I just found that the story's execution did not mesh well with my tastes, which is a shame. In the years that I have gotten back into reading, I'm realizing that I don't have patience for certain plots and character types and this book just hit all the marks for what I don't vibe with.

I feel that the book could have benefitted from a lot more editing when it comes to sentence structure and conversation flow. A lot of it felt either stilted or unnatural and I found it taking me out of the story quite a bit. In all honesty, I could have easily moved past this (I still read an ungodly amount of poorly written fanfiction) if it weren't for the fact that I found all of the characters insufferable. Yahimba consistently acts incredibly childish and everyone around her irritated me. Below I am going to go into more detail about my issues so this is a spoiler warning.

I completely understand why Yahimba had such reservations about getting close to her father's family and I understand why she had such deep-seated trust issues. This would be fine if the way she reacted to her trauma wasn't by lashing out and throwing literal tantrums every time she got triggered. This book could have honestly been a shorter novella because her issues felt drawn out for the sake of having a slightly longer story (which I realize is a kind of crazy thing to say for a book that is already so short). There would be scenes where her friend (whose sole purpose in the story is to tell Yahimba off) would help her see the error of her ways but in the next scene she would still be lashing out, showing she hadn't learnt anything making those conversations seem kind of redundant to the plot.

As much as Yahimba's immaturity would irritate me, the people around her really struck a nerve in me with the way they would react to her as well. Yes, they would acknowledge that they understand the reason for her distrust but sometimes it would literally feel like they were gaslighting her when something she had every right to be upset about upset her. Again, Yahimba 100% overreacted to pretty much everything, but it still irked me the way people would talk to her. Her man did not repent or reflect enough on the fact that he purposefully lied to meet an ex who then kissed him (even if it was not consensual). The situation felt bulldozed over because the focus was on Yahimba's trust issues. If I was her, I would have crashed the fuck out too.

Again, this just wasn't for me but I hope more people can find enjoyment in this story!