I am rather sad about this one.
The writing was enjoyable and the characters felt real.
A few people mentioned that they were bored by the absence of any significant plot and the slow pacing but I didn't mind that at all.
I really enjoyed just getting to know those people alongside the MC and diving into this world overshadowed by secrets.
Sadly the bit of plot we get at the end is kind of weak. I hoped that this was just a case of too little information or even misdirection but that wasn't the case. In the second book, it turns out that the plot really is incredibly weak and inconsistent not to mention clichée af.
I completely lost interest in continuing a third into the second book and dropped the series there.

I will definitely try other books by this author in the future because I enjoyed her writing style as well as the characters but I hope more effort will be put into the believability of the plot and the world-building.

Something that irritated me a bit is how the author puts so much effort and page-time into this intense sizzling romance full of anticipation but then just skips the actual sex completely.
I really don't need explicit sex in my books but this is about expectation built by the book.
Especially the second book has strong growing of age vibes and seems somewhat forced to fit into a YA mold so I assume this is the reason for this jarring skip in how explicit the series actually gets.
But then, no publisher would even release this as YA anyway, and afaik there is no rule against explicit content in the YA bracket either way. ( )