Rating: 🖤 🖤 🖤

Synopsis: The Porter brothers; Lake, Wreck, Vant, Dem, and Sav lost their father and non of their mothers are around leaving Lake who is 18 and the oldest to take on the responsibility to raise his brothers and maintain their lifestyle. Lake takes over his fathers street business that puts him and his brothers on top. The street life is all they know and they only trust family and have to find their way to survival and happiness according to their fathers teachings. Ivy and Avery are running away from a troubled life at home. As the oldest Ivy had to figure out how she can provide for her and her sister without further compromising herself.

Opinion: First I will say that there was so much to unpack in this book, and this is definitely not the read for anyone who may be triggered by any type of abuse. I for one love a good emotional book and that is exactly what this is.

The teenagers in this book are all suffering from some type of trauma and have to basically find ways to deal with their trauma and navigate their lives on their own without much guidance from adults. There is mental illness, domestic violence, molestation, and mommy issues in this book. I think all the protagonist had at least one trauma they were dealing with and they all had mommy issues. Nina did not shy away from anything but I liked that and thats what drew me in. Also I think that’s what made the characters relatable. There needed to be some explanation for the crazy and erratic behavior especially for the brothers.

As the book went on and I read more about their problems I was able to understand why they didn’t have respect for women or didnt care about people outside of their family. In the beginning I kept thinking what is the point in all this but things made sense as the book went on. I laughed while reading this book especially at the hormonal teens. I also cried because there were some very emotional moments especially with Ivy and Dem.

The relationships in this book were toxic but relatable to that young hood love that love extremely to hard and don’t know how to really treat each other. Ivy and Want were not as bad but it was still young immature love. I am interested to see how their relationship matures in the next three books. My favorite part of this book was the brotherhood. Their love for one another was very emotional at times. No matter how mad they got with each other they always remained a unit.

I was left with questions that I hope get answered in the next book especially about this mystery woman who I think is Mucci. I only rated this a 3 because some things were very repetitive like constantly reminding us they were all young and constantly mentioning the same teaching over and over that their days gave them before he died. Overall this was a good read and I look forward to where On Us with take me.