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If you'd told me the plot beforehand I'd never have read it.

Ultimately it's the story of a young lesbian in love with a girlfriend who doesn't give her the time and attention she needs, and what happens when she meets another girl who loves her.

(no spoilers summary) Our protagonist - Yuni - is high school student desperately in love with Nanase. Nanase loves volleyball, isn't sure if she loves Yuni, and is terrified of anyone finding out she's a lesbian. The combination of Nanase spending so much time at club, and refusing to let anyone know they're a couple means that Yuni is lonely and desperate to be shown affection.

Meanwhile Fuuko has found Yuni's "venting account" on social media, and fallen in love with her.

Fuuko is what makes this story complicated. She's manipulative in a way that typically makes me hate a character, but as the story progresses we learn that her manipulations are all because she truly loves Yuni, wants to protect her, and hates how Nanase neglects her and refuses to give her the attention and love she needs. I came to love her character despite being uncomfortable with some of her choices.

Fuuko manipulates Yuni into going on a date and their early relationship is rocky at best. Yuni lashes out, sometimes physically, and says some terrible things, because she doesn't want to admit that she could have feelings for her. A lot of Yuni's reactions feel like those of person who's pretending, sometimes violently, to be straight, and hurting those that care about her. This feels a little weird in that Yuni never shows any indication that she's afraid to be seen as a lesbian in public, its more as if she's pulling on those homophobic expectations to push Fuuko away.

Ultimately this is a story about Fuuko and Yuni's relationship and how it reacts when it bumps up against Nanase.

The following sounds like a spoiler, but it's really not: Some of the special images make you think they're going to end up in a polyamorous relationship. That's not the case, at least not in the first six volumes. I believe that Fuuko really could be happy in one. She's ok with the fact that Yuni loves Nanase. Fuuko just wants to love Yuni, and be loved back.

Yuni's mental state is not healthy, and her treatment of Fuuko is sometimes very unkind, but sometimes it's a direct result of Fuuko's manipulations. These are the kinds of characters I typically hate spending time with, and yet everything about this is extremely well done and I really want to see where these story goes. I love these complicated and sometimes broken characters. I want Yuni and Fuuko to end up together in a healthy relationship. I want Yuni to embrace what her heart really wants.

As far as "adult" content goes, there's only one sex scene in six volumes, but it, and the flashbacks to it, are excellent.

This is another great book by Seanan McGuire. I was happily surprised at how it felt like everything just kept building, and building. Then, when the villain was finally revealed, our heroes still weren't able to stop them right away.

The characters are great. Each one feels unique and real. There's also an extremely minor romantic angle that comes in late and refreshingly "just is". The book would be 100% as good if it were edited out, but having it there just adds a nice little bit of character building that continues in the sequel.

My only issue with this book is that it reads like a bunch of serial episodes put together. This is because it was initially created for Kindle Serials. The end result is that you get a little bit of the recap of the setting and that the main character is a "Snow White" again and again. In Seanan's defense, she does a great job of minimizing that.

Bonus points for having a character who is transgender where the fact that they're trans isn't a central plot issue, or a joke, & the other characters are totally supportive and accepting when it's mentioned.

Short Version: The core story and characters are good. The friends-to-lovers storyline and romance was good. The inevitable sex scene was decent. I'm interested in seeing what comes from this author as her skills develop, but it feels very much like a first novel.

Details:

However, there were a lot of new writer things that really broke me out of the story. Mostly it came down a lack of narrative time between mental states. A happy conversation rapidly turns unhappy when a stressful topic is accidentally mentioned, but then it's suddenly all good again.

The protagonist has convinced herself for a long time that expressing her feelings to her love interest (the pack alpha) will have terrible consequences for their relationship and the pack, but then within hours of a conversation about it with a friend - and essentially no time to internalize anything - she's managed to completely overturn those beliefs.

The world is fine, but there are so many things mentioned but not explained. There are werewolves, vampires, mermaids, werebobcats, werebears, humans, and who knows what else all just hang out and live around each other with no more problems than humans in the real world.

It feels wildly implausible to me that such diverse peoples - many of whom have strong ties to animal impulses - would have no more issues living and working side-by-side than humans do. I might be able to buy it if there was some sort of explanation, but there's literally none.

In the end I think I would have preferred it if there were about 100 more pages to fill in all the things in the world, and in people's backstories that are mentioned but not explained in any way. I want more time for characters to go between seemingly opposite ends of the emotional spectrum, and time for new ideas to be internalized and processed by them.

Short version: Like popcorn, it's a simple fun read that manages to rise above its all-too-common trope.

The core trope: Strong female protagonist with special ability / power gets embroiled in something dramatic, encounters hot and angry werewolf man, who helps address the central plot problem.

She's irrationally attracted to him even when he's being an ass-hole and the context is anything but horny-making.

He's irrationally mad at her, but ultimately forced to accept that she's right, and together they stop the bad guy.

I'm happy to report there's no hot vampire competing for her affections, and the protagonist and werewolf don't actually have sex before the book ends. 🤯

I'm happier to report that it rises above the standard crap that's written around this trope in many ways.

Kerri has written some unique characters, and an interesting new world setting where werewolves & witches are a significant part of government, at least as far as Australia is concerned, and wild magic sources are things witches protect for the good of all.

The main character's a low-powered witch with a human familiar who's just trying to run a coffee shop & stay hidden from her family.

Her familiar is a dark skinned "amazonian" hottie who is well written, but the story would be 1000x better if she was the love interest and they were just trying to have a happy life together instead of the tropey stuff about deep angry voices being hot despite all rational thought.

Honestly, the romantic interest subplot with the werewolf is the only real problem with this book.

If you're looking for a fun urban fantasy read, and can overlook that, I actually recommend it.