4.5/5 ⭐️| 3/5 🌶️

Summary: We Journey back in time to watch our beloved Kayog fall in love with his Dove.

Should be a simple story, for a match maker that can hear the songs of souls meant to be together. But we know Kayog has a storied past, a simple match maker he is not.

Linsea navigates the shock of finding her soulmate and the realization she might lose him.

Will her connections pay off? Will Kayog ever lead a normally life?

Sensitive readers should definitely read the trigger warning before going on this journey with us.

Review – Yeah… Regine didn’t come to pay.

She saw our relentless requests and said “okay… bet.”

Absolutely loved this story. Seeing where Kayog came from and all it took to get him where he is today.

We cover a lot of territory here and it’s done beautifully. We really dive into Kayog and Linsea’s story and I love that we get to see how Kayog became a match maker.

Idk how not to spoil anything here so sorry for the short review.

"Spoilers, Spoilers" – River Song

*The following is an open discussion about the book. Details will be discussed here and in the comments. If that's not for you, this is where we part. Hey, if you are reading this I don't want to hear "but spoilers", you had ample warning. lol

Okay, let’s get into it.

Kayog being a frontman of a punk rock band was not in my 2025 bingo card. I’m grinning ear to ear.

I feel like I accidentally pick up the saddest books right before my period starts. It’s like my uterus has a sixth sense. Everytime.

Which brings us too… not Kayog literally being tormented (unintentionally) for his entire first legs of his life.

And he still tried to his hardest to remain kind and not inflict his pain onto anyone else. Kudos.

I wonder what happened with his parents and if he ever reconnected with them? It must have been a hard choice to send him off that way. Especially since we know (or have to assume) they tried to prevent his death and were able to save him for atleast 4 days.

Which brings me to: I am flabbergasted that their never tried looking into Edals.

Once we learned that they usually died soon after birth, frequently commited acts of self harm and accidentally took the lives of others, I can see why there is a fear around them.

What I don’t understand is how an empathetic society couldn’t see that they were in pain and why didn’t that knowledge go into figuring out why they were in pain.

Which wraps into a bigger conversation about the things we, as a species, have so heavily stigmatized. Things we count as feral or deranged but are really people in pain, (e.g substance abuse).

Regine’s books always have me thinking harder about our society and the societies she written.

Linsea: I’m glad she snapped herself out of whatever that weird ‘hatred’ was in the first meeting. Also the way she just assumed thing absolutely Kayog ticked me off.

Girl, you are suppose to be becoming an ambassador not you making assumptions and running with them. The way she assumed he had a drug problem and just ran with it was wild.

I will say, it is fair that she did watch him then go and severely beat up multiple people, deserved btw, and she wasn’t able to feel his feelings so she was at a disadvantage. Especially since we later get to see how unsettling it is to loose one of your senses when we get Kayog first hand commentary on it. Which I’m slightly annoyed that I didn’t think of that when reading Linsea’s part. She has never been fully blocked from reading someone before so that must have been very unsettling, which in turn led to her making decisions out of a place of ‘fear’ or discomfort.

The Event:

• ⁠One thing I wasn’t quite sure on. Did the terror group set off the first bomb? Or was that Kayog?

I originally thought it was the protesters and then Kayog obviously was overwhelmed and in pain and then knocked out all of those people after. But then when we were going back over the events it seemed like they were blaming the entire thing on Kayog. So I was second guessing my understanding of events.

I can’t imagine the kind of pain he was going through.

Thankfully Linsea showed out at the hospital or they would have killed him for sure.

This is where we really get to see why Edals are so feared but also we get to see how remaining uneducated and simply going off of past beliefs is so harmful. Yes, Kayog was very dangerous at this point. But he was only dangerous because his society decided to kill off his species instead of learning about them and how to help them.

Obviously after this event, with the help of the best of the best, we were able to save Kayog. Not only save him but turn his life around. I don’t imagine he would have lived for very long if Linsea wasn’t as connected as she was.

I really hope they started trying to implement these helpful tools with others Edals that are born into their community.

I was actually kind of hoping that maybe Kayog and Linsea would adopt a Edal baby and help them.

Which brings me to:

Thea I was already emotionally unstable after the first event and then she just ripped my hurt out.

!<I’m glad they decided to let her live her for as long as she could. I would have 100% understood choosing an abortion because she wouldn’t have been viable but since it wasn’t a 100% certainty that she would actually develop the hormones that would leave her organs underdeveloped, I understood them wanting to go through with the pregnancy. With the understanding that she wouldn’t feel any pain what so ever.>!

!<They didn’t decide to have kids after that. Which was a sound decision, I couldn’t imagine going through that once let alone a second time.>!

I was not expecting her to be reborn as Malaya. That was very interesting and added another layer to their world.

Which brings me to my third break down, as Malaya reveals she knows they were/are her parents.

Regine really said “I’ll write the book but you will be puddles after.”

Matchmaking: I was geeked when we got to see more of the logistics behind Kayog service. Seeing what he was thinking and the reasons behind the decisions he made felt like the most fangirl of fangirl moments.

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