I’ve followed Vee Debras for a while, being on their readers team, and I knew I was going to be beyond satisfied. The cover of this third book even hint of some things you will encounter within, but it’s nowhere close to the real thing.

Cherry’s issues felt too close to home, the coping mechanisms too familiar, so I had to stop reading sometimes because of it. But Oliver? He’s everything that’s right in the world. Even a fictional one. (We have to find our ways to cope from our very own, right? So this one is a very great option if you can bear the content warnings.)

This one has been the harder to read for me, because it felt too close. But also, be really mindful of the warnings. I analyzed them because I knew Vee wasn’t joking about the contents of this book. I knew they could be harder than you could imagine by simple reading the trigger list. And they were. The heavy scenes (which, for me, truly, was only one) forced me to a stop as well.

Let’s summarize: I had to stop because it felt too close, I had to stop because Oliver’s kindness was everything I would have wanted on anyone—whoever—close to me, and I had to stop because even when I expected a certain heavy scene to appear, it went heavier than I could have grasped.

Past all of that, it’s an amazing book. It’s, surprisingly, my favorite one so far. I got to love Oliver more than Dusk, and that’s saying a lot coming from me—maybe, I want for myself an Oliver more than a Dusk, in real life; and when I got to love Dusk, I might have had in a different life situation and I no longer accept what I could receive from him. I saw more of Juniper (and I’m still waiting for her book) and I totally adore her, she’s the best character of the whole Brimrey Island, I can’t wait for her happy ending. Which, honestly, is something this book has as well, a happy ending. (And, as I’m being used to already, a curious cliffhanger.)