This is a spoiler-free review!
I downloaded this on Stuff Your Kindle Day and am finally making my way through my digital TBR pile as I shamelessly continue to avoid my physical one. This book was exactly what I needed to get me into a reading frenzy for the second half of this month.
Hazel and Cross have an accidental meeting after the people they were supposed to meet one night don't show up, and they hit it off. After years of not being in a serious relationship, the both of them are finally opening up to the idea of getting back out there and finding someone, even if they need other people in their lives to give them a push. Hazel's friend group and Cross's siblings really compliment their characters in the sense that they both have these amazing support systems in place, which you usually don't get to see a lot of from both leads.
All of the supporting characters really add on to Hazel and Cross's personal lives and their actual relationship as it develops. You can tell that the author really wanted to have these characters play decent roles when it came to forming bonds between themselves, and it worked out really well. If the story was written without Hazel's group of friends and Cross's numerous siblings, I do not think it would have read the same way or even ended the way that it did. I loved the meet-cute that Hazel and Cross had, as well as the general tone of their developing relationship throughout the book.
The author does an excellent job in building Hazel and Cross's backstories for us, with Hazel's having this aura of mystery while Cross has a sense of protectiveness when it comes to the people in his life. You can tell that Hazel is perfectly fine in the bubble that she has created for herself with her job as a mathematics professor and her close knit group of friends who are essentially her family. I found myself really drawn to this story as I kept making my way through the chapters, the characters are captivating and the sex scenes do not overpower the overall story. The more spicier scenes were pretty well done and were spaced out enough that the book was not just straight up smut, which is kind of what I had originally expected when I first downloaded the book, and I am honestly glad it did not turn out the way I thought it was headed.
I was eating this book UP like it was a seven course meal -- I literally read 84% of the book on the first day that I started it and had to force myself to put it down because I was about to finish the whole thing in basically one sitting and needed to collect my thought. I absolutely loved pretty much everything in this book -- the relationship development between Hazel and Cross was *chef's kiss* and their individual character arcs worked so well for them.
The suspense aspect to the contemporary romance genre of this book really was the icing on the cake for me -- the first half of the book is very meet-cute and new relationships, and then it slowly turns into this suspenseful play of feeling like someone is watching you just around the corner. Once the author really dove into Hazel's past, the tone of the book changes and drives the plot forward into a thriller. I honestly was having the time of my life reading this book -- it is a super quick read that will have the reader on the edge of their seat wanting more.
This was such a quick and fun read -- I will definitely be continuing on with this series, and I can't wait to see what the story has in store for the rest of Hazel's friends and Cross's siblings. I would recommend this book to fans of interconnected stand alones and for those on the hunt for a romance book with a bit of edge.
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