I listened to this while I was sick back in December, and I have to say that the narration was absolutely terrible. Ramona Masters has read other books in this series, and I have complained about her whining and terrible accents, but here it was irredeemable. I expect this would have been a 3 if I had read the text, but I was sick and could not look at a screen and I was too exhausted to even look for another audiobook so I finished.

I really liked Hale so it was disappointing he did not get a better book or love interest. Tara was whatever Meader wanted her to be in the moment. She was just a terribly drawn character.

When a writer pulls in puppies and intellectually disabled people to cuddle in order to make a character interesting or sympathetic rather than, I don't know, maybe putting some effort into writing an actual dimensional human, it doesn't work for me. Dex was absurd, so poorly written I cannot say very much about him. And the thing that was keeping Hale and Tara apart was absurd and just went on too long. So much potential squandered. ( )