Lenore Kosinski
4 stars — This book was so easy to fall into and devour…though at times with the secrets, I would flip ahead because I became impatient for my guesses to be confirmed. Truthfully, the whole intentionally keeping the reader in the dark through misdirection thing isn’t actually my favourite, and probably contributed to this not being even higher rated…but that’s a personal taste thing. In general I really enjoyed both Lyric and Quinn…even if I didn’t always understand them and their dynamic. I’m not huge on enemies to lovers, just because I have a hard time watching people be not nice to each other, so that was probably the other strike against this book. Lyric made a *very* selfish choice. But while I didn’t quite fully understand why, I appreciated that she eventually owned up to it and didn’t try to make excuses for herself. That was seriously admirable. Quinn was dealing with a lot himself, and I appreciated the look into how the childhood dynamic with his twin brother helped to shape some of his less than ideal qualities. Honestly, I was happy with this final version of him — his teasing was more goodnatured, and he seemed to be really trying his hardest to make amends for sins of the past. The two of them together actually had pretty great chemistry! OMG, some of the making out type scenes were just…woowee. Nice. One of the other aspects of this story that made it stand out was the fun cast of secondary characters, basically entirely made up of Lyric’s large family. They really seemed to have fun together, the siblings teased each other and weren’t perfect, but you could feel the love. The kids were fairly adorable and hilarious. And Lyric’s Mom was astute, kind, and understanding. It made for a great atmosphere of post-holiday fun. So yeah. Definitely a great novella to fill up my happiness cup and get me ready for the holidays!