Today, I’m makin’ waffles.

Okay, not really, I’m making stew for dinner, but I love Shrek.

Grace wakes up mid-way through the morning because she is skipping school again today. This time she didn’t even decide on it; Macy and her dad decided and just failed to wake her up. A simple sprained ankle is enough to get her out of class, somehow. It’s like this book set in a board school is allergic to having the main character actually go to school.

She’s got a text from an unknown number which turns out to be Jaxon asking about her ankle. She never once questions how he got her phone number. Doesn’t think it’s weird or invasive at all. Just gets twitterpated over the hot boy wanting to talk to her.

I’m still mad they have cell service, too. Utter nonsense.

They have what is honestly some cute back and forth flirting, exchanging bad jokes and the like. If it weren’t for my eternal hangups about logistics, I would actually like this. A character who has a Big Bad persona in person showing a more chill side when it’s not face-to-face. That’s cool. Half a brownie point.

Then the waffles show up. Someone delivers a breakfast tray to her with a little bit of everything, including waffles, and there’s a note from Jaxon. She gets all romantical again. Eh. Fine. I guess. Richest boy at the rich boy school gets the kitchen to send her breakfast. Fine. Whatever. I’m so underwhelmed while Grace is having her feelings explode.

topped with strawberry compote and what looks to be freshly whipped cream…in the middle of Alaska. In November.

It’s a fancy rich school kitchen and it’s not hard to make whipped cream. If you can get dairy, you can get freshly whipped cream. You put cream in a bowl with some sugar and maybe vanilla extract and you stir it really fast. Thassit. Go forth and enjoy your fancy desserts, readers.

They continue to text for another chapter, until Macy stops in at lunch time and also gets twitterpated about waffles. Then another…servant? Teacher? Staff member? Mail room clerk? Arrives at the door with another package from Jaxon. A library copy of Twilight. Yeah, yeah, he’s a vampire, why does this take two pages? Later Jaxon himself shows up and…more flirting. Perfectly serviceable flirting, but we are 200 pages into this behemoth and I do not care.

These three chapters are the only flirting we get before jump hip-deep into “oh no, we’re mates, no this book will not explain what that means” and on the one hand yes they needed to have a cute moment to get to that point but on the other hand it was so mild. I’ve done that kind of flirting with guys that didn’t get to a first date because it’s just so…surface level. Cute, but so what? And on a third hand, completely stopping the narrative to put in a half-hearted justification for why your leads end up falling in love? It’s terrible plotting. Either the author doesn’t know how to juggle plot lines and just has to fully skip from one to the other, or it’s an addition that was put in during edits when a deep re-write was actually needed.

Also we are two hundred pages into this book, we could have had so much more interesting stuff by now!!!

Well, on to the next chapter. It is now Wednesday, Grace’s fifth day in Alaska, and she’s finally going to class.

Hmmmm, this is a short post but I’m going to end it here so I can fit all of Wednesday into one post. Told you the pacing was going to be weird.