Probably the worst book I've read in 2025 so far. Not a single character behaved like a real person, none whatsoever. The idiot MC1 had a sudden change of heart 40% into the book and spent the other 60% saying over and over again that MC1 is trying to be better and is a "good person" and wow now MC1 is in love with him and wants them to have boring, repetitive sex (he didn't talk about sex like that, but that's what the intimate scenes were likes, so). It's said that the community was so homophobic 8 years ago that they didn't give a fuck when a child was bullied into suicide, yet now they "love him" and support him with money and free labor??? And MC1's mother suddenly forgives MC2 within the span of a few hours because MC1 said she should and she learned MC2 has a shit dad??? 

And don't get me started on the insane secondhand embarassment I got from all the nosy friends who were overinvested in the main couple's personal life, get the fuck out of here.

Everyone's business must be aired in public, one of the side couples needs a special ceremony and date to come out and there's a poor human trafficking victim who has his trauma exposed in a dinner table conversation like it's fucking small talk. Absolutely no one in that town understands privacy or human decency, despite one of the ideas of this book having to do with compassion.

The author's note in the beginning said that this can be read as a standalone (it can), but that the reader will become curious about the backstories (I'm paraphrasing here). I can confirm that it actually had the opposite effect on me. I despised the other characters to such a degree that I will actively avoid reading anything else by Kelly Fox, so as to never meet them again.