I almost rated this a 3 ⭐ but the writing wasn’t horrible. The premise was trash, despite having such promising potential, and the MCs are the most infuriating I’ve read in a long time. Half way through the book and they are still acting dumb and hiding their feelings. Everyone in this book works to get the MCs together and blatantly tells them they are in love with each other. Yet they ignore it. There is intimacy moments and physical contact but even this doesn’t get them to open up and be honest. MMC was told so many times by MFC that it was all as “friends”, he puts up walls. The MFC tells her friends MMC ” never acted on the moments” but that she gave him opportunity to say if his feelings were more than friendship. Girrrrlll. When you tell your longtime friend immediately after being physical it was all for another person while calling MMC only your friend, every time, he isn’t going to tell you he has feelings. Instead MMC takes what he can get with these “practices” and shoves his feelings down deep bc he doesn’t think MFC likes him the same way. The side characters were great, but I lost interest in this story so fast. If not for the cameos of past characters in the series I might have DNF’d after their time on the road trip at the half way mark. Never in a book have I wanted side characters to stage an intervention so badly, taking both MCs in a room and just directly saying they’ve both said privately they each had feelings. Enough with the emotionals games.
Also the voice acting was off. The cadence/speed of the male narrator was fast compared to the female narrator and it just made it hard to get into it. MMC didn’t seem to have confidence and for some reason — despite having so much in other books in the series — the narrator didn’t draw me to his character. Female narrator was great but the voice acting was also not a match since MFC was written with no confidence.
This is the most inconsistent series yet. I’m really holding out hope for the final 2 kids. There is a lot of teasing that the sister will get with the Hollywood football actor. And the premise of the youngest boy seems hopeful. It just seems like half way through this series the author didn’t know that to do and started refurbishing old plot lines but somehow made it more watered down.