I think I've discovered something about myself with this story.

While I can fuck with a miscommunication trope with the best of them, whether it be a lack thereof or just assumptions made without explicit verbiage being used, it's a conveniently inconsistent kind of miscommunication that just grinds my gears.

And the main character Denz was full of it. Same with his other half, Braylon.

Denz was MESSY. He had no sense of purpose or direction within himself, and had been perfectly fine just going through the motions and trying to meet the rather lofty expectations of his father and family as a prominent member of the rich and influential Carter family. I wanted to like him so much more than I did, which made reading his love story a bit of a trial and tribulation. 

Braylon, his ex, the love of his life with whom he had a rather devastating break-up with and whom never really gave him a chance to say his piece at the end of it all, was an introverted lonely man that loved few but loved hard and didn't really understand the concept of rules, at least not when it came to the agreement they had for their fake-dating scheme.

I just didn't love this one. The family relationships felt a little all over the place, and Kami and Denz especially never felt quite right as siblings. And while this story does a great job with discourse surrounding boundaries and lack thereof, I also felt like the best representation of them was with Kami and her secret boyfriend, who were not even the focus of the novel.

This just wasn't for me, and that's okay, but I'm not gonna lie, I'm bummed about it.