Mini Review Monday: Beneath the Hurt, Beneath the Stars

 

📖 Beneath the Stars by Emily McIntire

Some love stories start when you're young—but they don't always stay soft and simple.

⭐ Rating: 5/5 

🔥 Spice: Slow burn tension with a delicious payoff

💘 Tropes: Second Chance Romance, Friends to Lovers

📝 Mini Review:

Alina met Chase when they were kids, but the ache between them never quite grew up. With childhood glances, window whispers, and heartbreak that runs deep, Beneath the Stars is an emotional, second-chance romance full of longing, nostalgia, and healing.

This book felt like sneaking out after midnight and lying under the stars—equal parts beautiful and bruising. 

McIntire writes with so much heart, it lingers even after the last page.

💭 What to expect:

💔 Second chances

🌟 Childhood friends turned more

🖤 Broken boys with walls and the girls who see through them

📚 Emotional angst that hits deep

💭 What I Didn’t Love:

– The pacing felt a little uneven in places—some emotional beats lingered while others rushed by.

– Chase’s back-and-forth could be frustrating at times (though it makes sense for his character).

– I wanted just a little more healing on the page, especially after everything they’d been through.

Still, the emotional weight and raw vulnerability carried this story in a way that stayed with me long after I turned the last page.

🌙 Final Thoughts:

Beneath the Stars is a tender, aching second-chance romance that captures the quiet intensity of first love and the heartbreak of growing up. It’s messy, emotional, and beautifully written—perfect for readers who crave angst, deep character wounds, and the kind of love that survives in the quiet in-betweens.

If you’ve ever loved someone too early, too deeply, or too long—you’ll feel this one in your chest.

☕ Coffee Pairing: Vanilla oat milk latte with extra cinnamon—comforting, nostalgic, and a little bittersweet. Just like first love you never quite let go of.

⚠️ Content Warning: Includes explicit sexual content, alcohol abuse, mentions of child sexual assault, drug use/addiction, death, and foster care. Please check the author’s full TWs before reading.

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🩸 Next Monday’s Brew

If you like your vampires filthy rich, emotionally repressed, and fake-dating a sweet human cellist? Filthy Rich Vampire is your next darkly decadent read.

Think:

💋 Enemies-to-lovers tension

🖤 Fake relationship meets deadly court politics

💎 High-society vampires with secrets to burn

Julian needs a fake girlfriend. Thea needs a way out. Neither of them is ready for the kind of desire that might just ruin them both.

☕ Coffee Pairing: Black Forest mocha—rich, dark, and dangerously sweet with a hint of cherry… like temptation in a teacup.