My rating: 3 of 5 stars
***ARC kindly provided by the author in exchange for a honest and impartial review.***
I’ve been struggling with how to review this book. This is my first read by Cole McCade, and I wasn’t familiar with any of this writing prior to reading Over and Over again.
First, I should mention that I prefer reading longer stories to shorter ones. This one clocks in at just under 700 pages, which excited me from the get-go. What also attracted me was the demisexual rep.
The author goes into great detail of the day-to-day operations of a farm, and while I appreciated the attention to detail (and I did learn quite a few things), My interest was lost for about half of the book. I would have liked to get more interactions between Luca and his parents, to get more insight into their family dynamic. I also wanted to know more about Imre during the ten years Luca and his family were gone.
Another issue I had was that the writing is a bit too purple prosey for me. Descriptions are good for setting the mood and creating a visual for the reader; however, the excessive use of descriptive words went overboard for me.
In spite of the above issues, I really liked Luca and Imre. The characters were well-developed and easy to empathize with. I also enjoyed the inclusion of Hungarian and Romanian culture references.