Thank you to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group – Ballantine for an ARC of this book. All opinions in this review are my own.
This book was a very interesting read, for lack of a better word. It handles a lot of really deep issues with care and the things that bothered me about this book are probably just my weird quirks with books. This book follows Vanessa and Khalil as they go through their lives, watching their relationship grow & develop, and how they interact with the rest of the world both together and apart. This book touches on things like being in interracial relationships, being a black woman in a STEM field (multiple interlocking issues of oppression with that one), and being male with mental health issues. I think all of these topics were handled extremely well, but also I know that these are all each very individual experiences and so what Vanessa & Khalil went through is not going to be the same for every person in this type of situation. The thing that bothered me the most about this book was the constant use of pet names/how quickly the two of them fell over each other. This is 100% a personal thing and based on my own real world experiences, so this is not a negative reflection on the book, it just made it a bit harder for me to read.
I think if there is anything in the description of this book that sounds interesting you should check it out. It is a very good contemporary romance that touches on a lot of real issues and they are all handled well. 4/5