Stella is in her late twenties and inexperienced in sex, but she wants to change that. Going to a sex club, she has a steamy encounter with a gorgeous stranger, but still hasn’t traded in her “v-card.” Cut to the next day at work, where the company she works for is introducing a new AI tool they want the writers to use, and who should be the team lead of this tech project but Max, the very stranger who touched her the night before and set her body on fire.
Perhaps the most compelling aspect of the entire novel is Stella’s status as a “late bloomer,” as at 27 years old, she has not had sex. But this story promotes sex positivity: even though she’s a virgin, she does not see herself as innocent and naive. She openly discusses how she engages in self-pleasure and uses toys to masturbate. It’s refreshing to see a romance book that doesn’t make a virgin out to be completely clueless about sex and pleasure.
However, side characters like her best friend and roommate tend to throw a lot of shade at her for this. They sometimes talk down to her and infantilize her because, with Max, she has her first real relationship. True, Stella doesn’t come clean right away to him about being a virgin. But it still hurts when her friends treat her like a child due to her lack of sexual experience. That’s why when she tells Max this is her first relationship, and he doesn’t make a big deal of it, it’s a green flag for her.
When they finally do have sex, she does not tell Max it was her first time. This feels dishonest to the character’s development throughout the novel. It had been a major buildup from the beginning of the book, and then it was mentioned toward the end in a passing manner. When Max realizes he was Stella’s first, he reacts well and doesn’t make it a big to-do. But still, for how much it meant to her to lose her virginity, as a reader, I expected a little more time spent on the reveal.
Both main characters mention they are bisexual, but this is not the main focus of their relationship. During one of their dinner dates, Max nervously comes out as bi to Stella. But she quickly allays his fears by telling him she uses the label “queer” most often as she flip-flops between bi and pan. He mostly uses bi, but he’s not picky about using pan as a label either. Both agree they don’t concern themselves with their partner’s gender.
Max does have an introspective moment where he recognizes the biphobia that still runs rampant. As they dance among other couples who are straight-presenting, he realizes no one here is questioning their sexuality. But if they went to a Pride event together, he knew they’d catch sideways glances.
Our characters have intersectional identities, with Stella being a mix of Jamaican and Cuban, and Max and his brother being Dominican-born but adopted by white parents. They each have their own nuanced relationship with what it means to be Latina and Afro-Latino. Max speaks Spanish fluently, but he feels disconnected from his Dominican heritage since he grew up with white adoptive parents. Whereas Stella, who grew up with both her parents, does not speak it fluently.
The main conflict of the story comes from the office romance aspect and the AI project. (Some spoilers, highlight to read.) Although Max does not work directly at her job, he is the head of the AI project, Sparky, implemented at her publication by the company’s CEO, Miles, his brother. But Max quickly takes himself off as the lead of the project so as not to cause a stir at her place of work. And he keeps the information from his brother as well, trying not to create a conflict of interest for her.
During what’s called Sprint Week at Stella’s publication, content creators are tasked with completing 20 posts as fast as they can. But this time around, Miles raises the stakes, forcing them to use the Sparky AI to create the content if they want to win the $10,000 grand prize.
Stella decides not to use the AI tool and ends up winning Sprint Week with the most views on her posts. However, because she failed to use Sparky for her posts, she doesn’t qualify for the grand prize. Recognizing that she didn’t follow the rules, Stella doesn’t expect to receive money for her work. But she does talk to her boss about switching to the news team and taking the next step in her career. When she’s told that she embarrassed their CEO and that she’ll never work in serious news, Stella decides to quit. She writes an article that she publishes herself on a free medium, and it gains traction.
At this point, Miles’s true nature is revealed. His intention was always to show how the Sparky AI could replace real content creators, but Stella proves that wrong. Max, who naively believed his brother had good intentions of using the tool to help them with their work, pulls out and refuses to let his brother use his AI technology to downsize and let go of so many workers. Naturally, when Miles finds out about Max and Stella, he thinks it was a plot they had against him all along to bring down his company. (End of spoilers.)
Overall, this is a fun and fast-paced novel that gives its characters depth and room to grow. However, with so many different aspects at play (i.e., sexuality, sex experience, Latinx identity, AI technology, etc.), it never felt like any one point was fully fleshed out. The end was also rushed, leaving the relationship between Max and his brother Miles unresolved.
