First off, this is a choose your own adventure story. I absolutely loved the concept, and it was totally fun for me to go back and choose a different decision or path. While I liked choosing the path, I found that there were definitely some paths I didn't like as much. I guess that is to be expected. With this, there were 3 potential suitors, and all 3 had an ending where Alex ended up with them. I struggled with that a bit when I tried to wrap my head around him with one character after reading about and/or liking another character better. When I read a typical romance story, I want the MC to end up with their perfect match, and this made 2 other guys get in the way.

Alex has wanted to go to seminary school for ages, but now that he has finally received his acceptance letter, he is having doubts about whether he wants to go. The main theme of all the stories is that Alex has been a quiet, lonely, and mainly celibate guy who is now doubting what he wants in life. Romance is in the cards for him with one (or two at moments) of the other characters.

-Cyrus is Alex's best friend who in most of the stories has harbored feelings for him. Cyrus is trans, and the stories do a nice job of mentioning it so we know, but making it a non-issue and natural existence for the guys. Even though they were best friends, I wasn't a big fan of the two of them together, and I didn't like Cyrus much. Cyrus seemed jealous half the time, and I thought he was too wishy-washy and whiny. I didn't feel a click of them outside of just being best friends. I did not like any path that brought me to Cyrus and Alex being together.
-Montgomery is Alex's roommate, and I wouldn't necessarily call them friends. It seems initially that there is hostility between them. When we finally get to the bottom of Montgomery's annoyance, however, he is actually a really sweet guy in some of stories (in others, he remains an idiot). I actually did like Montgomery and Alex together. I thought that once they broke the barriers of why Montgomery was a jerk to Alex (because he had a crush on him), they fell into a comfortable relationship that was supportive.
-Lawrence is Alex's mentor and former counselor in college. He is older and bisexual. When Lawrence is involved in the stories (which is not in a lot of the directions that I could tell), he struggled with the position of power he felt he was in over Alex. I liked that this was addressed and discussed. I thought that Lawrence and Alex together was great. He seemed to fit Alex's calm nature better than the other two.

I loved that there was diversity among the characters. I loved that it was a fun format. It felt like a bunch of mini-novellas, and I'm sure that I missed something along the way as I tried to figure out all of the combinations I could. This could not have been easy to write to keep all of the pieces straight. Well done for that. 3.5 stars rounded up since there aren't half stars.

I am voluntarily reviewing an ARC provided by the author ( )