Shilo Quetchenbach's Reviews > The Unlikely Pair

I enjoyed this a lot. Jax Calder is great at crafting characters you can't help but like and great banter. Unfortunately, I had a difficult time suspending my disbelief and kept getting pulled out of the story through no fault of the story, but because I'm in the US. I kept trying to picture US conservative and liberal politicians in Toby and Harry's place and my brain kept emphatically noping out of that.

Despite the constant battle between immersion in the story and being pulled out of it, I really enjoyed it overall. Not quite as much as the Unlikely Heir, in large part because Callum and Oliver were funnier imo. Turns out I prefer bad-jokes-as-banter to political-arguments-as-banter.

It was also a little unsatisfying that we'll have to wait for the next book to wrap up the terrorist plotline. I felt like the ends were left a little too loose there for a convincing happy ending, although I did appreciate the rest of the ending and how everything else got wrapped up.

I also really enjoyed how Toby and Harry were forced to work together to survive in the wilderness and the way this made them appreciate each other (although the terrorists inexplicably showing back up to mess things up for them all those days later strained credulity.) I really love books where the characters end up in a secluded area with few (or no, in this case) people around and just live with each other and learn to coexist without all the pressures of the outside world.

I will definitely be reading the next book as soon as I can get my hands on it.

*I received an early copy for review.