CBR18 Book Bingo: Middle – Zale stays in the middle, never causing problems but ignoring what he wants for the sake of popularity and fitting in.
Shiloh is whatever the opposite is of “the life of the party.” He snaps at people before they can tear him down. It doesn’t help that his endlessly-lovable twin sister, Milly, is an omega who has the alphas at their small college eating out of her hand while Shiloh is the antisocial beta sibling. Milly’s boyfriend Zale – the stereotypical hot football player alpha – shares a business class with a gaggle of popular friends and Shiloh. Shiloh wants to hate him but is drawn to him. He doesn’t protect Shiloh from his friends’ snipes, but he doesn’t talk down to him either, especially when his friends insist on telling the entire school about what a slut Shiloh is after drunkenly hooking up at a party a month prior.
All of this sounds ridiculous and it is. However, Shiloh starts to trust Zale when Zale admits during one of their small-group study sessions that he is being pressured to take over his family’s business and to marry into an equally rich omega family. Shiloh hates that he is so attracted to Zale because Zale is a rich asshole and because he’s dating Shiloh’s sister. Shiloh’s sister is a piece of work on her own, and we find out more about how she and Zale got together and why Zale is so much more attracted to her twin than to her.
This book was fun. It wasn’t groundbreaking but the enemies-to-friends-to-lovers trope is one of my all-time favorites. Shiloh is a perfect prickly jerk, and Zale is the soft-hearted jock with a heart of gold. When the two of them finally got together, the story actually improved as opposed to losing steam. I’m not sure I’ll get around to reading the sequel, Knot Ever, but this was a very fun, fast read that checked all of the smutty, tender, ridiculous boxes of a typical A/B/O romance.
CW for references to sex while blackout drunk and bullying.
Bonus Jughead, I mean Shiloh.
