this book was a waste of trees. but more importantly, it was a waste of my money and time.
warning: the spoiler part of this review will be a rant more than anything else in this review (i will be going through the five stages of grief without the bargaining or acceptance)
non spoilers:
there are so many things wrong with this which i can only explain in the spoilers but basically the mystery was okay, a bit underwhelming, but i personally don’t think a third book was necessary. she just wanted to create plot. which she did. successfully. and ruin characters. which she did. also successfully. good on her. the ending was awful i hated it (i’ll get more to it in the spoilers). xander served as usual. what an icon honestly. he was the best part of the book besides the actual loml grayson davenport hawthorne. i love that man with my entire being. unfortunately i can no longer listen to daylight or enchanted by taylor swift ever again without crying so for that i can never forgive jennifer lynn barnes.
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spoilers:
first off, i cannot even explain how many times i sobbed reading every scene with grayson my heart broke for him i love him so so much
"everything hurts." only grayson hawthorne could say that and still sound utterly bulletproof. "it hurts all the time, avery, but i know the man i was raised to be."
i’m freaking sobbing rn my tears truly are ricocheting. he deserves so so much my poor baby :’(((
i spent all this time thinking grayson was betty but turns out he’s augustine. i’m crying myself to sleep tonight. i simply cannot believe it.
first, the mystery was lowkey just not good?? idk it felt very rushed and like the author was just grasping at straws trying to get things to connect?? like it was just so convoluted and i felt like the mystery in this was a bit underwhelming ngl. like the way it ended was very anticlimactic for me. like a chess game?? nah it was too low stakes it just didn’t cut it for me. like the mystery in TIG was the best and in THL it started going downhill and this one just was the mystery at its worse. i wasn’t at the edge of my seat like i have been before reading her other books. no twists and it ends in a chess game?? the mystery in this book was the definition of underwhelming which kinda sucks for JLB bc it was marketed as a mystery with a love triangle and both those aspects were not good. the naturals did it better.
now i’m also so angry. i’ve never been more angry at something in my life. i don’t care that averygrayson isn’t endgame istg. but she didn’t have to freaking ruin grayson’s character?? like what the heck. literally why the heck would she sit and try to make jameson better so we’d be content with him and then literally pull a reverse character development on grayson. BS. when would grayson ever EVER drop out of harvard?? out of freaking HARVARD?? like what the heck was she thinking. i get that he was working on the charity but he’d never give up harvard. i think he’d probably do both. maybe that’s just me but that’s so out of character for him. and she just absolutely wrecked his character and FOR WHAT. for us to be happy w averyjameson endgame??? well i’m not happy with it and i never will be. jameson sucks. if she thinks one book of giving their characters a complete 180° is going to make me like jameson more she’s wrong. and if she thinks it’s going to make me okay with what she did to grayson, she’s also wrong. she’s trying to convince me that jameson and grayson’s characters completely flipped and i’m sorry it’s so STUPID. BS. she absolutely destroyed any character development gray had from the first two books. scratch that. she destroyed any character development he had throughout his entire life. absolutely stupid and pointless.
grayson deserved so much better. jameson gave us absolutely nothing as usual, and yet avery still picked him. the lack of taste is very obvious. grayson and avery are soulmates and are meant to be together. i’m disappointed in JLB but i’m more disappointed in myself for believing avery would make the right choice. JLB is a genius but i think she ruined grayson’s character so i’ll never forgive her for that. i’m not attacking JLB i swear i wouldn’t do that just bc i didn’t get what i wanted bc JLB is amazing and everything she writes is a masterpiece and i’ll read anything she writes. i’ll just never trust her to do my favorite characters justice anymore. i’m not rating this book low bc i’m mad that averygrayson isn’t endgame, i’m rating it low because it doesn’t make ANY sense to me, and i’ll explain why.
i’m mad because if averyjameson was always gonna be endgame, there was no point in a love triangle. there is still so much left to explore in avery and grayson’s relationship but only bc she decided to insert him as a second love interest (which she didn’t have to do). if nothing was going to come out of it and averygrayson wasn’t going to be endgame, there was no point in a love triangle. the love triangle was just UNNECESSARY. and that’s why averygrayson not being endgame makes zero sense to me. and if there is one thing i hate more than a love triangle, it’s an unnecessary one. not only that, but i hate when authors feel the need to completely wreck a character in order for the love triangle to be solved. if anything she should’ve destroyed jameson’s character; it’s not even like he had much character to begin with. in my mind, he’s one of those tiktok e-boys (??) and you know exactly what i mean. he’s BASIC. and honestly his name starts with a j. biggest red flag if i’ve ever seen one.
averygrayson endgame is the definition of a missed opportunity. the heiress x heir apparent trope??? come ON. the fact that grayson travels the world and documents all the little moments and avery desperately wants to travel and see the world??? they’re soulmates. the fact that whenever avery kissed jameson she only ever felt fire but when she kissed grayson everything around her disappeared and the moment felt like an eternity. that’s the definition of “i once believed love would be burning red, but it’s golden, like daylight.” (i can no longer listen to daylight by taylor swift the same ever again) how about the fact that grayson has only ever showed vulnerability in front of avery??? or the fact that everyone thought she liked grayson more than jameson in the second book??? how about the fact that avery said a split second of contact with grayson gave her the same rush as driving 200 mph would when she had driven with jameson at 200 mph two chapters before that (in book 1)??? how about the fact that avery is very clearly jealous of eve bc grayson is giving her attention??? not to mention how she still admits she has some feelings for him. and mind you, jameson literally said he’s trying to act like grayson so that she can love him LMAO like what?? you mean jameson knows avery loves grayson so he starts acting like him like what the heck even is that?? like just put avery and grayson together if they love each other instead of making jameson be grayson LMAO. like JLB’s favoritism towards jameson is really showing. whatever. it seems to me like JLB decided to ignore every little hint she put for averygrayson endgame and decided to ignore the fact that they clearly have feelings for each other just for the sake of the love triangle being tied up in a nice little bow. it’s not a nice bow. it’s ugly. really ugly. but whatever at this point, i don’t even care about the love triangle; as long as grayson is happy.
long story short, i wish this book didn’t have romance, or at the very least a love triangle where it wasn’t necessary. focusing on the mystery would’ve made me less annoyed at this book.
now let’s talk about eve. you wanna freaking tell me gray knew her for two days and started calling her “evie” but knew avery for a whole year and doesn’t call her anything like “ave” or something?? like hell he’d actual call her evie. this is complete and utter BS. i get that she looks like emily but absolutely not. i’m not stupid but jlb certainly thinks so. there is no world in which he nicknamed eve in legit one day. especially after everything in the first two books and him moving on. that’s stupid and dumb and completely out of character. jlb decided to ignore that he was very clearly moving on and made it so that he had faced nothing which HE DID. JLB really did have a blast ruining grayson’s character. she had a marvelous time ruining everything.
to add on to all that about eve, you want to tell me eve looks exactly like her AUNT who has a different father than toby (her dad)?? like hold UP. they’re supposed to be twins and they even sound like each other??? listen i don’t need a PhD to know that for them to look and sound like literal twins is literally physically genetically IMPOSSIBLE. i liked that these books were rooted in reality but that made me have to suspend my disbelief for a sec bc like there is no way in hell this girl looks like her aunts twin and her aunt doesn’t even have the same dad as her dad. girl idk what JLB was trying to do but this was just so unbelievable i just physically couldn’t handle it.
and back to the triangle, i mean as long as avery’s happy then it’s fine, but like??? jameson is the fun temporary type. LMAO jameson and avery won’t last past the epilogue ngl and i’ll fight anyone on that. grayson is husband material. grayson is forever. and i just feel bad for avery bc she couldn’t see that. anyway gray deserves better than someone who can’t make up their mind. and yk what?? he deserves better and he deserves to not be a second choice. he deserves to have someone love him wholeheartedly without them thinking about someone else. i know he still loves her and maybe (in my mind at least) they’ll find their way back to each other someday. but for now, he’ll be able to love himself, in the sense that he’ll learn to accept his flaws and all that self-love stuff. honestly. but he didn’t get closure in the end which im mad about and im still mad jlb undid all his personal and character development he had in the first two books in moving on from emily. but whatever.
the ending of the book was the worst thing ever. i hated the one year later; we all could’ve done without it. like she started a charity called “hannah same backwards and forwards foundation” ??? LMAO PLEASE no one is gonna be taking the foundation seriously with a name like that. and she gave all her money away??? like i get that it was to start a charity but she did NOT have to give away all her money. honestly gray would’ve found a way to start the charity and keep most of the money at the same time, but girl wanted to go and choose jameson who knows absolutely nothing about anything, who’s getting himself thrown in jail every two seconds instead of someone who can actually support her in everything. mind you usually you pick a partner who’s on your level in different ways but avery decided to go with the guy who can’t even hold an intelligent conversation without talking about a puzzle. she ended up choosing a guy that knew she loved someone else so they decided to act like them instead of letting her go to the guy she liked. not only that, but he told her that if she did go to the guy she actually liked, he would make it a game bc he doesn’t like losing??? like avery’s standards for men (i’m not talking about gray he’s perfect i’m talking about jameson) are so low?? like her boyfriend her freaking BOYFRIEND told her he knew she was in love with grayson but no she decided to stay with said boyfriend like???? i’m at a loss hun. in any other love triangle, it would make sense for the mc to go to gray so that it’s ACTUALLY a love triangle but JLB loves jameson too much and decided i’m going to market this book as a love triangle but give the second love interest no shot at all so that it’s NOT actually a love triangle. and honestly avery from the first book was a girlboss but avery in this book was lowkey annoying ngl.
i’m don’t generally consider myself a petty person but averygrayson isn’t endgame (and it doesn’t make any sense from any standpoint; the love triangle ruined the series for me) and grayson was done dirty, so i’m being generous and giving it two stars until i’m over it then i’ll actually rate it.
now it’s time to to blast my tears ricochet and cry myself to sleep <3
(also grayson hawthorne singing freaking shake it off is my new favorite thing i love him with my whole heart and my whole soul and i just want him to be happy <3)
(also grayson has a puppy now they’re so cute i love him so much. i bet his camera is filled w pictures of her now. i love gray so much i’m happy if he’s happy)
and remember folks, #justiceforgraysonhawthorne