It was a quick read and a decent start for her first novel. The writing wasn't great at the start, didnt exactly hook me in, but it improved, and I got into the story fast. I did enjoy reading the book, but was left disappointed in the end. It didn't quite feel complete as a story, more like PWP but with very little of the first P...
If you want to to hear about my pet peeves and dissection of the main characters, carry on. Spoiler free.
Myles was a very sweet character, he had a bad day when he met Hunter, and I get that, then teased her some more, but made up for all of it. That's not enemies to lovers for me, but it was still sweet to read.
I kind of missed the personality for both, the plot outside the romance was non existent too, so everything just felt very superficial, other than them being attracted to each other and being good people, I'm not sure what else there is to their relationship.
I'm not a fan of men calling women "squeaky" or referring to them as "females" in their field, and while I understand the choice might have been made to show Myles wasn't perfect, it didn't really fit and was quite off putting.
Jess was A LOT at first, but she was a very good friend, even if everything between Hunter and her seemed to develop instantly.
To me, most of what we learnt about Hunter seemed contradictory, and not in a she's a complex character way, more like an unfinished way where there where to different ideas of who the character should have been.
Hunter was raised mostly by her dad, trained in a male dominated field, is very good at her job, and supposedly stands up to people that arent her parents, with ease. Yet, she blushes and stutters constantly when talking to Myles at first, has difficulty talking about kissing and sex and feelings, and very much gives young virgin vibes when not on the podium. But she's said shes had sex and relationships before. Her last one was abusive, and I thought this could explain her behaviour, but nothing in the story alludes to that, she's just very shy about those subjects, but not about anything else. Idk it confused me. I was also surprised by how slow Myles was taking things considering he wasn't aware of what had happened to her before, and didn't have a reason to treat her with white gloves. It would've made more sense to me for him to attempt something, get rebuffed, and then make a drastic pace change.
I thought perhaps we might be getting demisexual representation due to how awkward she was around things like physical contact and repeatedly saying she had never enjoyed it before or only was interested in it now because it was Myles, but that also didn't materialise. She didn't seem to have a particularly conservative or religious background, so the whole "her never orgasming even by herself" thing was weird, and just seemed like it was there to make Myles have a magic dick. (In combination with a few other things, some previously mentioned, it just gave a slight tinge of internalized misogyny)
Thank-you NetGalley for providing the ARC. All opinions are my own.