✨Im Literary Anxious✨

Estimated Reading Time🕒 3 minutes

𝗔𝘂𝘁𝗵𝗼𝗿: Scarlett Cole ✍🏻𝗣𝗮𝗴𝗲 𝗖𝗼𝘂𝗻𝘁: 340 📖

“𝙄𝙨 𝙞𝙩 𝙖𝙡𝙡 𝙧𝙚𝙖𝙡𝙡𝙮 𝙩𝙝𝙖𝙩 𝙨𝙞𝙢𝙥𝙡𝙚, 𝙍𝙤𝙣𝙖𝙣?”
“𝘠𝘦𝘢𝘩. 𝘐 𝘭𝘰𝘷𝘦 𝘺𝘰𝘶, 𝘘𝘶𝘪𝘯𝘯. 𝘈𝘯𝘥 𝘪𝘵 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘺 𝘪𝘴 𝘢𝘴 𝘴𝘪𝘮𝘱𝘭𝘦 𝘢𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵.”

🔥Age Gap
🧁Enemies to Lovers
🔥Slow Burn
🧁Angst and Emotional Wounds
🔥”Fuck It”
🧁Solved Mysteries

𝑰𝒏 𝑺𝒎𝒐𝒌𝒆 𝑾𝒆 𝑻𝒓𝒖𝒔𝒕🙌🏻

I loved Smoke and Quinn’s story—so much.

Smoke’s trauma, and the uphill battle he faced to come to terms with it, felt raw and honest. You can’t help but root for him. And Quinn? My sweet, sweet Quinn. I will literally throw hands for you, my baking queen.

She was painfully relatable in the most specific, “I feel called out but also seen” kind of way. A couple of her lines straight-up lived in my brain rent-free:

“When my brain has been quiet in sleep and hasn’t yet woken up enough to realize it’s free to start its daily rampage of thoughts and to-dos and remembering that one time nine years ago when I was at a party and said the wrong thing.”

Ma’am. Why are you subtweeting my entire existence?

And this gem:

“Oh, you clearly don’t know women. We have the clothes we bought when we were skinnier. And the clothes we bought when we were bigger. And we don’t get rid of either, because we’re constantly changing size and shape. And then there’s the clothes we bought on a whim, when we were down, or when everyone else was wearing it. And it cost too much to throw out or give away, so it sits in your closet staring at you, begging you to wear it, but it’s not even your tenth or twentieth pick because you really want to wear the super-soft faded clothes you bought ten years ago. Even though they have holes. And don’t get me started on the sweaters that itch around your neck and make you want to tear the thing off by midafternoon.”

🔔BING BONG. Hi, yes, I am emotionally fragile right now, thanks for asking.

And then Smoke hits back with:

“Clothes should never shame you. You don’t love them, they don’t fit right, you toss them.”

Stick a fork in me—I’m done. 🫠

Cards on the table, this one got me emotional. And while I can’t say much without veering into spoiler territory, I’ll just say: no one in Quinn’s family is getting a Christmas card. I expected about 50% of what went down… the rest? I what-the-fucked my way through it in the best, most chaotic way.

Also? I love the depiction of a young couple who doesn’t want kids—and how that’s not framed as a “problem” or a “phase.” Though I did have some feelings about the fact that this warranted a content warning… but that might just be a personal ick.

And finally, the second epilogue? I won’t spoil who our next outlaw is but…

SCARLEEEEEEEEEETTTTTTT 😱🤩😱🤩😱🤩

I. Can’t. Freaking. Wait.