Many thanks to the publisher for sending me an advanced reader copy of this book for review.

This book is really a series of short stories following Jamie, a young man on vacation with his newish boyfriend Alex. Jamie recently lost both of his parents in rather quick succession, and is struggling with the immense grief weighing him down. We spend time both with Jamie, Alex, and Kit (their AirBnB host), and in the past in the various memories Jamie has with his parents. In these memories, we get to learn about the complex, sometimes troubled yet kind people Jamie's parents were, and we grow to understand the deep feeling of loss Jamie has.

This story was sweet, it really was. But I feel like it was more of an attempt at endearment that didn't quite land. We got to spend a lot of intimate time with our small cast of characters, and I genuinely enjoyed learning more about them. I loved learning more about the complex relationship and love Jamie had for his parents. I appreciated Jamie and Alex's "new boyfriend" relationship, it was really well executed. And I loved Kit, their host who seemed so genuine and kind.

However, there were a few stylistic choices that I think interfered with my enjoyment of the book. Firstly, few characters really had a distinct voice. Kit and Jamie's father come to mind as very unique, but everyone else blended together in tone. While this isn't a huge deal, it became troublesome with the formatting of dialogue. You see, the author rarely included markers such as 'Jamie remarked' or 'Kit inquired' or 'Alex asked', opting instead to allow the context of the passage indicate who is speaking. But because most of the characters didn't have a distinct voice, I was often confused as to who exactly was saying what. It wasn't until the middle of the book that I realized that it was Alex who was actually a person of color and not Jamie, and it was Jamie's old house they were hoping to visit, not Alex's.

This was further complicated by the fact that the dialogue was so stilted and inauthentic, it felt like an entire book of people talking past each other. No one seemed to really be engaging in conversation, rather just speaking at whomever was in the room with them. There were other stylistic inclusions that I suppose were Jamie's thoughts appearing mid-passage, but they felt so out of place and lacking context, I felt that they took me out of the narrative, questioning "What does that mean? Where is that from? Why is that there?"

Lastly, and this is more of a funny observation, but it took me until the very end of this book to realize that Alex was not a vampire. Yes, really. In the first chapter (titled 'We don't drink beer'), Kit says to the boys "you two...need to get inside and get your beers in the fridge" with Alex's response being:

"'Oh, we don't brink... beer,' Alex said, flashing his fangs"

I had to end up looking up if 'fangs' was some UK slang term (I thought I was familiar with English slang until I read this book), and it doesn't seem to be. Was Alex flashing his... teeth... in response? Why would he do that? Why would they be referred to as fangs? Why was specific emphasis put on 'beer' implying that it was something else they drink? So bizarre it stuck with me for the rest of the book.

All in all, I found this to be okay. It was short, and it was sweet. I just wish some of those aspects had been polished up a bit more so I wasn't pulled out of the narrative as often. Otherwise, I think it would have really resonated with me.