Iris feels like she’s a hot mess, never entirely sure what direction to take her life and never entirely able to make ends meet. Then she inherits an old house in a small town and starts renting rooms to try to pay the bills. Meanwhile, Eli has had a crush on Iris since they were kids and when they meet again by accident, he ends up renting a room from her. Between them and the others who move into the house, strong bonds start to form and they can hopefully start to heal.
I know other reviewers found the way that Eli kept up with Iris’s social media accounts creepy and stalker-ish. And yes, it is, but it’s not something I picked up on as a red flag, especially since he is one of our PoV characters and you can see how sincerely he only means well. The issue of him not being truthful with Iris before moving in with her is one of these things that makes me roll my eyes and just wish people would stop being so stupid. It’s such a small thing to have said at the start, and later heartache could have been avoided (something that bothered me about The Undertaking of Hart and Mercy too).
But putting that to the side, this is a story about found family, as Iris collects the waifs and strays into her home and everyone starts to care for each other, not just the romantic tension between Iris and Eli. Henry Dale is a classic grumpy old man, with a heart of gold. He’s got a thing about being useful and his building and carpentry skills come in useful in maintaining an old house. Sally is an older woman who’s left her husband after many years of marriage and is a bubbling pot of energy. Mira broke up with her girlfriend and needed somewhere to stay quickly, while Rowan needed to get away from her biological family. We don’t get as much time to spend with some of these as I’d have liked, especially Mira. The relationship ties between the others are stronger, and there’s a great grandfather/granddaughter energy between Henry Dale and Rowan. I suppose with so many characters, some were bound to do better than others.
There’s also a fantasy element, with Eli being able to shapeshift into a hawk, and Iris being from a family of psychic vampires (they drink emotions, rather than blood). Iris’s powers haven’t manifested yet, and her sisters and mother all look down on her for it. Like with Rowan, Iris’s biological family are very much set up to contrast with her found family.
The end feels very rushed, with a pretty hefty deus ex machina pulled out of nowhere to solve the major problem put in front of the characters in the last act. The traditional romance breakup over secrets (see above) and reconciliation also felt a bit rushed, but that didn’t bother me as much as some. The deus ex machina was more of a thing, but I’m a sucker for a happy ending, and I’ll still take it.
This is, apparently, book four in a series. I’ve not read the others, and this feels entirely standalone to me. I think some characters from previous books show up in cameos, but I never felt like I was missing anything important.
I think the book did have some issues in terms of the deus ex machina and Eli’s stalker tendencies, but I still loved it.
