The Next 365 Days (Unabridged‪)‬

I don’t know what to say. I probably shouldn’t of watched the movie first… I was very much Team Massimo.. I felt like the author read me for filth personally at the end because I honestly felt sorry for Massimo and still rooted for him and Laura. I guess I fell for his charm as well lol. Oh well. Also the weird possessiveness that Nacho has over his sister and not Laura has me perplexed.

Such a TURN of events!! Domination is such a desire but domination and compromise 100% more important above all else. Bravo. 👏👏

I love a good smutty trilogy like the next gal, but this book caused me to have a visceral reaction to almost every plot point.

Here are my thoughts in no particular order:

1. Consent. The author must have received the feedback that her first two books completely ignored this concept, so she shoe-horned it into the finale. She could have made a starker contrast between Massimo and Nacho in terms of a loving, consensual relationship, and had Laura choose Nacho because he actually gave her a choice, but I think Lipinska herself is drawn to toxic masculinity in a partner. And that’s only seggsual consent. The medical aspect of this is just as egregious. Laura is an alcoholic with a heart issue, and I can only recall one or two times within the series where she voluntarily takes her medicine instead of having it placed in her mouth by a man. She receives a heart transplant (at what cost, she never questions) and drinks alcohol as if she has three kidneys, not one. None of this seems to have any impact on her. It’s as if she was a car that needed a new fuel filter, nothing more.

2. I can forgive a lot of the flaws of this series (I know what I signed up for) but I cannot forgive being robbed of a compelling conclusion to the 365 Days love triangle. If we’re looking at this through the Twilight Saga fanfic wormhole lens, this is a seggsy alternate dimension where Bella (Laura) chooses the werewolf (Nacho) over the vampire (Massimo). Except that Nacho ultimately turns out to be a bit of a vamp himself. Maybe not so openly toward Laura, but he controls his sister Amelia very much like Massimo controlled Laura. And even though Nacho proved that he wouldn’t black out and beat Laura if he became drunk (what a low bar), his sober reactions to their disagreements were still not “healthy.”
I wish we could have suspended the gratuitous (albeit boring) seggs scenes long enough to build up some suspense and seggsual tension between Laura and Nacho while she was still under Massimo’s thumb. But instead she runs into Nacho’s arms within the first act of the book and we’re left reading the author’s attempt to flesh out the book to 385 pages.

3. I think what we are meant to take away from the failed relationship between Laura and Massimo is that Massimo only wanted to be “gentle” or vulnerable with Laura because he thought she was an incarnation of his “vision” from years ago. Once he realized it was a memory and not a vision, Laura was relegated to being another dehumanized lover of a literary Andrew Tate. (Those last two sentences did a better job of explaining that than the whole book.) This kind of negates Massimo’s whole arc earlier in the story where he talks about basically growing tired of the nightlife, women, cocaine, etc. I know the author needed a way to push Laura and Nacho together, but if you ask me, Massimo was enough of a villain already. I MEAN, HE KIDNAPPED HER AFTER ALL.

4. The mafia is not omniscient. I grew extremely tired of hearing Nacho tell Laura that he knew everything, saw everything, anticipated everything… etc. I liked that Nacho seemed to be more of a caretaker to Laura, and had more emotional expectations of her than physical. But when he told her he knew she was on the pill down to the brand, I said “ew” out loud. We could have had a more human version of this character, who knew his limitations as her protector which would have upped the stakes and drama. But instead we have two know-it-all mafia bosses who have time to insist their goons are CPR certified in the event Laura attempts to take her own life. Just ew.

5. There’s no way that the second pregnancy is not extremely high risk. I know we’re supposed to be excited that the baby is Nacho’s and not Massimo’s, but a 7-week look back of Laura’s activities would have her drinking to excess most days and nights (on her one kidney, I might add) and barely eating, in addition to Massimo drugging her for two weeks straight. I’m pretty sure real pregnant women have to scrutinize taking even one Tylenol, so I’m sorry if I’m not running to check the Mayos baby shower registry.

6. At some point in the book, Nacho tells Laura she has a weird way of coping with stress when Laura suggests bl0wing him in his car. The author had an opportunity to dive into Laura’s character and have her question her relationship with and use of seggs, but no. Why would she write a story about personal growth when she has to make sure she writes two seggs scenes per chapter?

7. Domenico and Olga could have served as a healthy(er) relationship role model to Laura. I found their relationship to be more compatible than either of Laura’s, and Olga seemed to have more agency over her own life. This was a missed opportunity, and I can only imagine it was because the author’s intentions for the story were so disconnected from what the readers of her series wanted.

Ok bye.