Like the first book, Moreland is not subtle. It's obvious what the danger is going to be and who the "bad guy" is. And then the resulting drama was more or less predictable. And I realized that this book, as well as the first book, should have a content warning at the start because both deal with some heavy topics.

While I liked Aiden, Bentley is more my preference. Like Emmy from the first book, Aiden has some serious childhood trauma, including verbal and physical abuse. The pacing is a bit up and down, but some of that is Aiden's push-pull with Cami. The character development is 0 to 60. Aiden is all buttoned-up and suppressed, and then drama ensues and BAM! he's all in. The one thing I did appreciate is that in both books, the characters, including Aiden, acknowledge the need to discuss their trauma (both present and past) with a professional therapist/psychologist.

And like the first book, there are only a few sex scenes, and they really aren't memorable. John Lane's voice does nothing for me in somewhat mediocre spicy scenes.

Overall, it was an easy read despite some of the heavy topics. 

Both Maxine Mitchell and John Lane were good narrators with both the characterization and accents in this book. Maxine Mitchell was already one of my fave female narrators. I was impressed that John Lane narrated differently for Aiden than he did Bentley. And the narration was a bit more evenly split between the POVs. 

Liked this one slightly more than the first, I think because Aiden was a more interesting character to me than Bentley (shout out to a little dyslexia rep too). But it was also good to have the other characters from the past books involved and have their stories advance some more as well.

The relationship between Aiden and Cami was more dynamic and angsty than Bentley and Emmy as well - I liked that Cami wasn't stagnant in the friends with benefits space because her emotions were that she actually liked Aiden more than that and wanted more. And I appreciated that when Aiden was truly showing her

that his feelings were more as well, that she read that as signs to maybe push a little more

- it felt so believable (as did her confusion with the emotional whiplash Aiden consistently then pulled). The scene where Cami

apologizes to Aiden for pushing and not respecting his words when he said he didn't want more than sex

was a really nice addition - it felt like the scene I want in every miscommunication plot point because it's so direct and clears the misunderstanding up because it

forced Aiden to actually admit that he did have feelings for her

. Overall a really satisfying scene.

Just like in the first book, the climax external conflict of

Lucia being obsessed and a stalker

was obvious early on so how long it took for Cami to actually pick up on it was frustrating and her refusal to take it seriously was annoying... although the explanation of her thinking it was

actually her exhibiting signs of bipolar disorder

did feel like a believable explanation... especially because she was so insecure about it. As a conflict, it did serve as a seamless way to push Cami and Aiden back together and make him really confront his feelings.

I'll probably read the third book just to round out the stories from the main crew of the three boys, but might not finish the whole series.