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I had no clue what I was getting myself into when I picked up this book, and WOW did it take me on a beautiful and pain-filled journey.

Jackie is the first masculine female character who I’ve ever read about chest binding, and the first time I have seen gendered body dysphoria so present in (contemporary?) lesbian fiction—though not labeled as such. Jackie is still binding her chest at 90yr old, and this topic just does. not. appear in lesfic. I am so grateful to this author for including it, and for writing Jackie’s experience of gender so …gracefully.

I actually don’t know how to critique the writing at all because nothing mattered to me about the grammar or sentence structure—I only know how this book made me FEEL, and I’m not even sure I can describe that. It was haunting, it was difficult, it was beautiful, it was troubling, and it was raw emotion at every turn.

An absolutely phenomenal story! 6/5

A solid mix of characters and main love interests who actually talk through their issues?? This was a mostly low angst romance, bordering on instalove… the timeline of their story spans about a year(?) but somehow it all felt fast. I loved the circumstances of their first night together, and how the title was tied into both the beginning and ending of the book. The acting choices Abby Craden made for every character were perfect, though It seems like she mixed up the names of two characters in chapter 25 by saying, “Dawn is our COO” instead of Dee.

Just one qualm: sure, Dee is demanding and abrasive, but it was unclear how such fantastical rumors could possibly take hold at their workplace. Wendy jumped out the window?? If the company had a farewell party for Wendy when she moved, how could that rumor possibly persist?

I’ll be looking forward to the short follow up story Jae released about this pairing.

I have been looking forward to reading this book for months—my first read from this author. The premise reminds me a lot of Paper Love by Jae, and I really enjoy stories involving mistaken identity and romance.

Unfortunately, Read Between The Lines was incredibly clunky to read, and the simplistic writing choices were made even more apparent by Abby Craden’s narration (though her voice did earn this book an extra .75 stars).

An area very much in need of improvement for this author is writing dialogue.

Almost every two person conversation went like this:

“Blah blah blah,” Jane said.
“Blah blah blah,” Rosie said.
“Blah blah blah,” Jane said as she adjusted her skirt.
“Blah blah blah,” Rosie said.

It was nearly unbearable to listen to this repetitiveness in audiobook format, and since I also own the ebook, I searched for instances of “Rosie said.” It was repeated over 200 times, and that does not include what all the other characters “said.”

Though there is a lot of room for improvement in writing dialogue here, the creativity of the storyline and the interesting situations the characters found themselves in did make me hopeful for other books from this author.

Sexy/icy boss and saccharine “smart girl” romance is one of my favorite tropes, and Never Say Never fits the bill...mostly, but I found myself wishing for more detail on several points:

• Camila's work—little snippets or details to understand what was so demanding of her time and how she was perceived by the world at large.
• Is Camila like Regina Mills—kind of evil and also broken inside? Is she more like Miranda Priestly—ruthless, cunning, always ahead of the game, and the envy of all?
• Beyond Camila’s prestige, and her physical attractiveness (though there wasn't much in the way of description of her appearance beyond her clothing choices), what actually made Emily want to be with her?

The book was timelined to be a slow burn, but their mutual attraction wasn't developed enough, and (apart from the taboo of dating a younger woman and a subordinate) it was unclear why Camila was so hesitant to move things forward with Emily (though there was one comment from Camila about her reasons right at the end, it felt unsupported by the rest of the book).

The potential was there with their chemistry, but I finished this book with a lot of unanswered questions that distracted me from appreciating the pairing's eventual union.