Ugh, what a weak note for the Hendrix triplet stories to end on. A lot of this book is just... a mess, from the relatively one-note characterization of Nevada and Tucker to the explosion of weird gender/sexuality generalizations (women being obsessed with their weight/eating salads, bisexuality not existing, brothers having to "defend" their sister's honor with physical violence...) to the totally pointless Cat subplot. There's some good -- the family moments, as always, Jo and Will's and Denise and Max's story, and honestly, Cat as a main character would have been super interesting! (it's just that as a plot device here, there is LITERALLY NO POINT, she adds nothing to the story and doesn't move the plot along in any way except the very end) -- but on the whole, this might be my least favorite story so far.
I don't even really understand Nevada and Tucker as people-- Nevada is somehow both confident and settled, and still pining for Tucker even though she barely knew him when she ~fell in love with him and he called her by another woman's name during terrible sex?? And Tucker himself is just... kind of a dick overall, and I had very little sympathy for how he handled anything. Their relationship is okay, but so weirdly back and forth (we shouldn't have sex! But we want to, so we're going to! No feelings, but suddenly feelings!), and the resolution is really frustrating. A lot of the book is dedicated to setting up the heroines for the next set of books, which is also really distracting; Cat, while a fun character, adds literally nothing to the plot as is, and talks so much about her "feminine" period that it starts to get incredibly obnoxious. (Also, like, literally no one would notice how many women are working "traditionally male" jobs if y'all didn't bring it up every few pages!! Stop!!).
The main thing that propels this from boring to decent are the side romances-- Jo's backstory is so sad, and Will's relationship with her is great (though I do hate that she's viewed as wrong for not responding when he ~just wants to get to know her or whatever; it doesn't matter how nice he is, she's allowed to not want that!), and Denise and Max's second-time-around love story is delightful-- it's nice to see Denise so happy. And the end was pretty heartwarming, despite my consistent broken-record screaming of DON'T GET MARRIED TO PEOPLE YOU'VE BEEN DATING FOR LESS THAN A YEAR, SWEET JESUS, WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE. Sigh sigh.