On the surface this book is basically right up my alley. I love a good-boy-bad-boy romance, especially with one big punkass—see also The Nightmare Before Kissmas or The Entanglement of Rival Wizards—and the marketing definitely made this book seem like it would deliver! Our main characters here are Molly, a golden retriever type who’s recently moved to Seattle, and Seven, his heavily tattooed, avoidantly attached, black cat energy roommate. Molly wants nothing more than for a man to love him, and Seven is assiduously avoiding romantic relationships. What could go wrong, right?
Unfortunately, where this book fell a little short of my expectations is mostly in the characterization. Everybody in this book is a mess. Molly seems to base his entire self-worth on whether men find him fuckable and is embarrassingly eager and willing to date basically any guy who looks his way; Seven, as mentioned above, is extremely avoidantly attached and struggles with expressing any kind of emotion; Xander, Seven’s foster brother, has debilitating medical anxiety and an unhealthily codependent relationship with Seven; none of these people are in therapy or seem to have any intention of getting into therapy until literally the last couple pages of the book. And, like, you guys! You’re in Seattle! You can throw a penny in the air in Seattle and hit three queer and traumatized people on the way down! There are so many community resources and mutual aid resources that could help them deal with their traumas and they’re not availing themselves of a single one. Jeez!
Consequently all of these characters behave in ways that to me read as extremely immature and weirdly focused on the wrong things? Like the book literally opens with a scene in which Seven has been tied up, non-consensually photographed for revenge porn, and then abandoned in his bed; Molly comes to his rescue, but when he finds out that the reason for the revenge porn was a jilted ex-fuckbuddy who had wanted to be more than fuckbuddies when Seven didn’t, instead of (reasonably) thinking “Huh, it’s a bummer when people’s expectations don’t align,” he instead goes off on a rant about how Seven deserves it (HUH??) because all men are the same and nobody ever wants to be honest blah blah blah. Like are we living in the same universe here? Seven deserves to have revenge porn made of them because someone he fucking wanted to be boyfriends and Seven didn’t??
Similarly, Xander and Seven have an extremely codependent relationship that they both recognize is unhealthy, but instead of seeking therapy or doing literally anything to untangle that codependence, they both seem to have adopted an attitude like “well I’ll just never date anyone who doesn’t understand that you’ll always be more important to me than they are.” Which is so deeply and obviously unhealthy for all parties involved! Get therapy! Be better!
I think that ultimately, though, all of the above would have been forgivable for me if they were interrogated by the text or if there was some reflection or awareness that the attitudes on display are unhealthy. But the narrative seems pretty content with things being as they are, without challenging the need for therapy or the notion that maybe hanging your entire self-worth on your datability isn’t the best idea, which I found frustrating as a reader and a queer, traumatized adult with a fully formed prefrontal cortex.
(BTW, where the fuck in Seattle are we renting a house with TEN BEDROOMS and only SIX ROOMMATES? If you can afford like $1700 for rent per person then you can afford therapy lmao fuck.)
Anyway, I still finished the book and I did like some of it, but I doubt I’ll read anything else in the series.
Pleasure: ★★★☆☆
Purpose: ★★★☆☆
Prose: ★★★☆☆
Plot: ★★★☆☆
Personal: ★★★☆☆