I think everyone has their favorite out of the three Brown sisters, the character they find more relatable and more wonderful and whose book they enjoy more than the other two, and for me, that character was definitely Dani.

I loved Danika Brown from her first appearance in Chloe’s book, and I loved her even more in this one. She was such a vivid character who jumped off the page from her first appearance and never stopped feeling vibrant and real. I can’t speak to the experience of being a Black woman in academia, but I do know the experience of being a queer literature person, of wanted to impress a scholar you admire, of being in an English seminar discussing Christina Rosetti’s Goblin Market, and Talia Hibbert depicted all of those experiences perfectly, down to the minutiae of the students discussing the potential antisemitism in the text. I related to Dani. I wanted to be her friend. If Zaf weren’t there and she were real, I would probably want to date her. She’s just one of those characters.

Zafir was also wonderful. I didn’t think that I would be okay with Dani ending up with a man, but Zaf was absolutely the perfect man. He’s attractive, yes, but more importantly, he’s sensitive. He’s her friend before anything else happens (and I’m always a sucker for a good friends-to-lovers arc). He’s actually interested in her work, and she’s actually interested in his. His family and best friend were just as fleshed out as hers were, and I would absolutely read a book about any of the side characters (though maybe especially Saoirse).

This book and these characters absolutely wormed their way into me in a way that I didn’t think contemporary romance was capable of. The framing of romantic feelings as something else and not something “more” in comparison to friendship is something I haven’t seen enough in romance (or in life). The discussions of trauma and oppression and mental illness were always done sensitively. The characters got proper closure where they needed it outside of their relationship and put in the work to be there for each other properly.

The third-act breakup absolutely destroyed me because I somehow tricked myself into thinking that this book wouldn’t have one because the characters were so well-adjusted and good at communicating.

Favorite quote:
“The world wasn’t split into unhappy endings and happily ever afters.”