I DNF'ed this book at about 50% after trying to return to if over a number of months - 2 stars for DNF's so that i dont mess with the rating.

I didn't enjoy the characters at all. The damaged trying to help damaged mixed with love is just a terrible idea. The internal homophobia was off putting for me. I hope that there was some redeeming features for those that finished the book.

Thank you NetGalley and Publisher for an ARC in exchange for my honest review .

I felt like this book had a lot of potential the plot sounded interesting and I was enjoying it a lot at the beginning it did have its rough patches but not enough for me to quit the book I found though as we hit close to the half way mark everything started slipping it started feeling very rushed and I was annoyed by the insta love (not my favorite trope) I was expecting more of a slow burn considering both characters seems to have quite a bit of trauma and that they both pointed out they weren’t sure about their sexuality’s. Right away you can tell they are attracted to each other and that they are starting to question their sexuality’s but by the end they are saying they love each which wouldn’t be to odd till you remember they have only known each other for 24hrs.

Elizabeth Arroyo does a great job at dropping us in the middle of a dramatic situation and keeping us hooked until we find out what caused the characters to get there while they find a solution to their problems. Danny and Luca are two well developed main characters; the contrast of homeless kids that found their own family and support, compared to a kid who seems to have it all except someone to protect him and make him feel loved, creates a bond between the reader and the characters.

However, the story relies too much on the same formula of a villain coming in to interrupt the MC’s main goal. The falling in love aspect of the story comes too quick and feels very unrealistic, but definitely can be redeemable in the last chapter of the book. I would also like to point out how nicely Arroyo represents a bisexual character and he coming to terms with his identity.

I went into this book prepared to enjoy it. I was so very wrong. The plot for this novel seems very thin. I thought it would develop, but it never really found a solid footing. It kind of just meandered along as dangerous things kept happening.
The two MCs were well-developed, but some of the internal monologs were on the cringeworthy side. I tried to overlook it, but by the 65% percent mark, it seemed like too much back-to-school special stuff laced in there that just didn't land. The MCs did show growth. I always appreciated that in any novel.
The love story felt painfully rushed. Most of the book takes place over such a short period of time, it makes it impossible to feel believable. Love at first sight is an old trope, but poorly done here. Attraction and love are two very different things. The ending really sealed this book's fate for me. I don't want to give spoilers, but it felt like it was done to be unsatisfying.
I will end on a positive and say the writing was very strong. The story was just not what I was hoping for.

this book disappointed me.

at first, it was engaging I mean come on it's about two damaged kids having to put their differences aside even if it was for the time being. it was entertaining and exciting to read until about a quarter way through the book. then it became so predictable that I had to force myself to finish it. I don't like books that start slow and boring so the beginning of this book did make me happy since it wasn't in any way boring but instead of keeping up the pace of being a plot that kept you on your toes it just.....took a nose dive. not a fan, I don't recommend it.

3,5 stars rounded down.

So, I had to think some about this book before I wrote my review. I decided to change my rating from 4 to 3 and I'll tell you why.

At first, I really thought I was reading a book with a potential 5 star rating. It was engaging, it was pulling me in from the beginning. It was quite clear from the first pages that both Luca and Danny were damaged kids, both for different reasons, but damaged they were. They don't start off very well, but they're sort of forced upon each other, relying on one another for, again, different reasons.
A lot of things happen - it's a cruel world when you have to live on the streets in Chicago, and when all you try to do is survive. That's how Luca's entire world looks like. Danny comes from a different world - his dad is a rich politician who just doesn't seem to care about his son ever since he showed 'unnatural' behavior. But since his mother passed away, his father is about the only adult around whom he can turn to.

An unexpected friendship develops between Danny and Luca, a bond that's getting stronger during the night when they are faced with difficult and dangerous situations, up to a point that both realize they might have deeper feelings for the other.

That's where my potential 5 star read went a bit off the rails. I don't like insta love, it's by far my least enjoyed trope, and this felt a bit too much like it. Even after having been through a lot of emotional turmoil together, I'm convinced you can feel some sort of attraction and feel some sort of deeper connection, but love? No, not buying that. Certainly not when you know these boys are aged 17 and 16.

I had some issues with the plot as well, and that's one of the reasons I decided to round down instead of up. Because the writing is good and strong, there's the character development I need when I read a YA/NA romance. But the plot wasn't all that strong. Lots of questioning things happening and I mean, it's fiction, I usually look past that, but still it needs some sort of real life connection, some reality. And I found myself more and more thinking that some things that happened lacked reality. And I didn't like that.
The ending wasn't what I hoped for either and it felt rushed. Such a bummer, because this book really started off well and promising.

Still 3 stars for the writing, for the character development and for Luca and Danny, whom I did like as main characters.

I gave up at 38%, when one of the MCs, Danny, recites an internal litany of reasons why he is Absolutely Not Gay -- which is realistic enough for a kid with an extremely homophobic (and specifically sissy-phobic) father, but then Danny gets to this reason:

Girls were repulsive. Too soft and too smelly.

WHOA.

At that point, I was already handwaving half the plot and pretty much all of the characterization, and for a reason I'll mention later, I would have quit reading long before had this not been an ARC that I felt some responsibility to give a fair shot to.

As I list my objections I see that individually they may not seem like much; the thing is, they kept adding up. Nothing was done quite right -- it was just mediocrity all the way up and down, including the dialogue and the quality of the prose. The phrase "nibbled to death by ducks" comes to mind.

So. Danny and the other MC, Luca, meet at O'Hare, where Danny has flown by himself over the winter holiday break because his boarding school has a sudden carbon monoxide issue that somehow can't be temporarily addressed by turning off the boiler and giving him a space heater.

Danny's father, who apparently loathes him, hasn't come to meet him or sent anyone else to do so.

*handwaving initiated*

At 16, Danny is old enough to be traveling unaccompanied without an airline escort (I checked); the escort is generally optional for kids over 14. Still, it's a stretch to believe that the "principal" (don't they call them headmasters in boarding schools? okay, whatever) would send him off to a city he'd never been to without springing for the escort. The principal needn't be especially conscientious: civil liability is a thing, to say nothing of the school's image if something happens to Danny.

Besides! So his dad hates him, so what, because, like civil liability, Child Protective Services is a thing. Even if you want nothing to do with the kid, you make some arrangement for him just to cover your ass, don't you?

Next, Danny falls asleep in the airport, which is nearly empty because it's snowing heavily (wait -- wouldn't the airport be full of people freaking out about their canceled flights? at Christmastime?) and while he's asleep some men steal his suitcase.

Do you think bands of thieves roam empty airports looking for suitcases to steal? Me, if I'm a band of thieves, I go to places where I have better odds of finding nabbable goodies.

*handwaving intensifies*

Let us now turn our attention to Luca, the other MC. He's homeless -- he was at the airport sending off another boy, Cy, for reasons that weren't clear by the time I gave up, but that evidently had something to do with the gun Luca has and with the bloody bullet that he washes off (why???) before wrapping it in toilet paper and flushing it down an airport toilet. The bullet that he clearly had on his person for at least as long as it took to buy Cy's ticket and get him to the airport. Wouldn't you think he had some earlier opportunities to ditch the thing? I also wondered why he was hanging on to the gun, but I'm not counting that as a problem because maybe some good reason would have been revealed later.

Moving on to the characterizations.

"I've never been to this blasted city," Danny says. Yeaaaaah, when was the last time you heard an American 16-year-old call something "blasted"?

I'll wait.

(BTW, Danny also has a watch. A WATCH. *snort*)

Luca tells a couple of friends the lie that Cy went home to his grandmother, who "extended an olive branch." That phrasing sure does ring true for a homeless 17-year-old who works for a pimp.

Then, oh then. Luca and Danny are at a shelter for homeless teens. Rocco (who, per Luca's earlier description of him, can throw down and lord did I hear the author trying to be kewl right there) consoles Danny as follows:

"What is a home, Danny?" He waited and when I couldn't answer that, he said, "It's a place where you feel safe. Protected. A place you can be yourself and know that those around you love you. That's what I think a home is, which means I'm not homeless."

Honestly, for a writer to put such after-school-special platitudes in the mouth of a homeless teenager isn't just bad, it's dishonest. Dishonest emotionally, and dishonest socially because it treats a systemic problem as an individual matter and presents that as a Great Truth. It's Great Bull, is what it is.

Oh, and then there are the malapropisms ("the feelings jettisoning into my chest" WUT) and the casual racism. I honestly don't get this. Arroyo is Latinx but she has Danny think "Miles Sanderson's parents had been stuck in some third-world country," which -- I don't know. If this had been a Kindle sample instead of a Netgalley ARC, I'd have bailed right there, at location 126.