It’s an extremely interesting choice to have the flashback of MC1’s 16yo brother’s funeral include the knowledge that MC1’s bestie was “dating” him, then not have MC1 either flip his lid because 20yo+16yo≠legal. The author also doesn’t include it in the “caution” section, so that’s a bit wild to me. They also have MC1 stay super accepting of the fact that bestie was still “in love” with his underage brother and even became roomies with him, so yikes, Adam.

We also have underage sex work, as well as sex work for the drug use we were informed of in the warnings, plus a 16yo (past MC2) and “someone more than twice [his] age” getting together through MC2’s sex work.

Maybe I’m being too sensitive about it all, but these are things mentioned at multiple points, up to just before I DNFed. I feel that running mentions of things like that mean a few extra warnings might be warranted.

Anyway, those were the big things that kept making me 😤 every time they were brought up, but I also didn’t enjoy how the writing switched from descriptions and inner thoughts to almost exclusively dialogue once Adam and Nox meet in person. I want to be able to picture a scene with an author’s voice, not just have two characters meet up and have a pages-long conversation before the scene ends and picks up with another day. Even when the Phoenix reveal happened, I didn’t feel any emotion in the moment because it was mainly dialogue that was trying to be sad with no feeling behind it.