Holy cuteness, I loved the set-up for this one (sexy phone voice rawr). Also our h/h are lovely together (read: totally freakin' hawt together) and easy to root for. I found the writing a bit bogged down with pop culture references which didn't always flow well within a scene, esp scenes lacking dialogue. It hit some of my annoyances with contemporary romance (sorry, y'all, I really deal more in historicals) but not most so I found it enjoyable despite my usual tastes. This is the second time I've said this recently, and it's very unlike me, but I think it could have been longer. So much was being crammed into the novella length that I would have liked to have seen parsed out over novel-length. For example, I think there was so much territory to mine via the phone relationship bit but that part felt like the blink of an eye. Recommended. ( )

Okay, so, I read this for the autistic rep (I'm autistic) and I have some mixed feelings.
I enjoyed both characters, though the story in general felt a bit boring. I also liked the fandom representation although the references often were clunky and forced (and the audiobook narrator pronounced some of them wrong!). In terms of autism though, whilst Gus was somewhat of a variation on the classic autistic dude laundry list, I kept feeling like the author (who I assume is NT) was treating autism like a dirty word! Gus never says he's autistic, instead choosing to make veiled references to 'his brain' and 'what's wrong with him'. It... didn't feel great, to be honest. ( )

Oh my gosh, this book was so good. Alyssa Cole is the reigning queen of inclusivity, and her writing is just so good. The synopsis does not do this book justice. I’m so glad we got to know Regina more. ( )

I grabbed this for Novella November because I really enjoyed Once Ghosted, Twice Shy, also by Alyssa Cole, and in the same series. I was charmed by the premise, and there were some moment sprinkled throughout that I really adored, but overall this book left me a little cold. Gus seemed a little too perfect, the way they met a little too unlikely, and the ending felt a lot rushed. I was intrigued by the disability rep, but the neurodiversity elements of both characters felt underdeveloped on the page. I get that the story is about their romance and not a thorough discussion of both characters' various physical and mental conditions, it just felt like there was no there there. I did root for them, I guess in the ends I felt like there were too many elements to fully resolve in a satisfying novella. Of course, this is a part of a series, and I have heard that Reggie appears in other book(s?) so maybe I would feel like she was properly fleshed out if I read the rest of them, but at this point I am unlikely to do so.

Most people seemed to have liked this book pretty well, for some reason it just didn't click right for me. ( )

Pretty darn fine. ( )