CW: SA Technically spoilers, but I'm not marking it as such because people may want to know this before going in.

I was really enjoying this, like 4 star worthy, but I'm SO SICK of books sneaking in sexual assault as a plot point that ends up being critical to why the character acts how they do.

SA victims are not always so messed up that they end up in rehab, so why do so many books with "surprise" SA themes end up using it to make the character that experienced it super messed up and broken?

SA is not some trivial thing to invoke to get the narrative you want in your novel, especially not when it's barely actually mentioned or discussed in any meaningful way and just sort of of tossed in at the end.

Was flip-flopping between a 2 or 3 star rating for this, but sitting here writing this review and reflecting on how inappropriate the use of the SA theme was I can't justify anything more than 2 stars. Is this rating perhaps biased by the fact that this is the second book I read this month with "surprise" important SA themes? Yes. But that just shows how much of a growing problem this trend is becoming.