Rating: 3 stars
Buy Link:
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Length: Novel

 

Requited is a companion novel to Unrequited and tells West and Andy’s story from West’s POV. Although it starts out telling the same story, the path goes in a different direction at one point and they get an updated story. This is more of a what-if scenario — what-if Andy and West had explored their feelings earlier and saved themselves a decade’s worth of heartache. I found it helpful to read Unrequited first and suggest reading the books in immediate succession. Some of the scenes are revisited here, but not in full, and the narrative does rely on knowing and remembering events that were discussed in the first book. It did make for uneven reading at times and it also felt like I was coming into a story already in progress. This style, combined with the lack of character development and depth to some of the scenes, didn’t fully appeal to me.

The book highlights even further how tormented both Andy and West are for not being together. West didn’t tell Andy he was bisexual and it seems that West played games to get Andy to notice him, but Andy was already in love with West. We get more of West’s personal journey here and more of his relationship with Ashleigh, which only further highlights how unhealthy that relationship was.

While West’s point of view was needed in book one and I was interested to see the story from his side, I found West and Andy to be much more frustrating in this book and I was then waiting for the part of the story where Andy’s and West’s journey veered off from the first book. They still had all their insecurities though and still had a lot to work through from all the hurt they piled on each other, and this book only illuminated that hurt more. So much could have been avoided and this book really calls that out.

For the structure of this story, I didn’t feel it needed to be an entire book and some of West’s point of view could have been added into the first book. I was also left not knowing which story was their true story. Their happy ever after in this book, however, is even more heartfelt than the first book. We get more story on them once they are finally happy without all those years of them being apart and seeing all of the poor decisions and that part was worthwhile.