Purity: A Friends-to-Lovers College Romance

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The hero’s sexuality is treated like a kink and mentioned on the fly out of the blue at 50%. Even though we’re in his head quite a bit, he never even hints that he’s into men too. Not even kinda. It’s just dropped as a bomb after he’s done the deed with the h, to make him seem more edgy. It was handled so strangely. And then just forgotten. Okie dokie. It was just a lot of brooding, and hiding it from each other that they had feelings- and then BAM, the sudden switch, where everything's suddenly fine. And a lot of their dialogue was so awkward pls.

He mopes and gets some insightful advice from grandma. Then h gets some insight from her sisters fiancé who knows H well. H gets help from a friend to show h a video of him trying to explain himself and tell her more truth about how dishonest he’d been with her, specifically things she didn’t know he’d been dishonest about. He specifically references wanting to embarrass his grandpa with the TikTok live they had planned BUT doesn’t name specifics so she knows that this isn’t about that for him. This works for some reason and she agrees to meet him to talk. I seriously need to tattoo Skyler Mason’s name (the Author) in my brain because I absolutely despise all of her books and i never realise they are by her until i come to goodreads to complain about them. Moreover, the most important factor is that Brandon doesn't want to be in a relationship with Mari because of her father yet when her father has a talk with him makes me think Brandon craves validation from her father which is fair I guess. But I don't know I just don't like it hshhshshshs A MMC who loses his mind when his shy, sweet, never been kissed best friend finally starts to break out of her shell and flirt with his friendsBlurb: When I became a pastor, I made a solemn vow to I wouldn’t touch another woman until I met my destined wife. Since I’ve literally slain the only other book I’ve read of this author, I was feeling a lil bit guilty and I’ve decided to give her another try. Spoilers ahead, particularly concerning the “grovel” but also other things for context. If you don’t want such specific spoilers then don’t read further. He falls first and hard. He watches her online and admires her from afar but when he actually meets her. Its as if the earth shifts. He has these feelings from nowhere that he doesn’t recognise and doesn’t know how to deal with them. She chooses the hero and then she basically becomes a slut in less than one hour which is quite unbelievable. But ok, this is fiction and we can accept this as we can accept the fact that the hero, a commitment phobic until he meets the heroine, suddenly falls in love with her and wants to marry her as soon as he breaches her maidenhood. And I’m not joking folks. I think this could be a divine revelation, it seems proper.

While some reviewers criticize the book for being too male-gaze-y, the sensitive portrayal of Cole’s protective nature towards Livy adds depth to their relationship.And similarly, with the h and her arc, the story started off at a point where she wanted to break out of that 'purity' mindset- but we didn't get to see ANY of the initial thought processes behind it, but were rather thrust into 'the big epiphany of her character'- which legitimately took away from the whole concept behind this book? since he’s a weak and insecure boy he doesn’t tell her at once, but he tries to make her fall in love with him proposing six weeks of exclusive sex. How romantic. I looked past the manwhore/virgin combo bc the author was saying what a huge grovel it had.....there was literally no grovel. Half the book the heroine is already aware he is manipulative anyways. It just had no tension or stakes. She forgave the one infraction he did that she didn't know about almost immediately. If this was an epic grovel than romance books are dead to me 😂