As a Black woman who loves astronomy, I was so excited to read a Black romance with an astronaut love interest! The cover is absolutely adorable & it has my favorite trope, fake dating. So, I thought there was no way that I wouldn’t enjoy this. However I’m giving up reading it after 18%.

There is so much telling and not enough showing. It feels so info-dumpy. Every single scene is described in such vivid detail that it gets boring. Here’s an example: after bumping into the love interest, here is what the main character thinks: 

“After catching my footing, I'm grateful the lids have held and neither of the cups in my hands spilled. As good as the coffee is, some of the baristas are notoriously awful at putting the lids on, so I always make sure to snap mine tightly before grabbing them.

Foresight and planning for the win.”

All she had to say was “luckily the lids didn’t pop off”… 

(but maybe that’s why I’m not a writer idk🤷🏽‍♀️)

And all the main character does is think. She thinks about the same things over and over again, so it feels very repetitive. And this romance isn’t dual POV, so we only get her thoughts. The most annoying thing to me is when I realized that after every piece of dialogue, a paragraph of her thinking about what was just said would follow. I don’t have to know every single thought in your head. Sometimes people can just have a conversation. If there’s a paragraph in between every piece of dialogue, that’s a problem. And also, I don’t understand why Amerie dislikes Vincent so much. All he did was try to tell her a fun fact and now she gets annoyed at anything and everything he says. 

This book is just frustrating to me to no end. It was one of my most anticipated romance books EVER and I just can’t finish. Disappointing. But, I’m glad so many people love it! (I’m literally the only person I know who doesn’t) So if the things I mentioned won’t bother you, try it out!