Heads up: I received a free advanced reader copy of Tips and Trysts, but the review is my opinion alone

Rating: 🤩

tl;dr: Tips and Trysts is very hot, very funny, and also very smart.

I wasn’t quite sure what Rebecca Kinkade could do to make me like Everett as much as I liked Lander from Streams and Schemes (especially after his behavior in the prior book), and it turns out the answer is pay for it. And beg. And also just basically lose his damn mind. That’ll do it, that’s for sure.

There was never any doubt I’d love Cora—which of course I did—because she’s been a badass from the beginning. I’m just glad Everett became someone who at least came close to deserving her. Because after the way he treated her in Streams and Schemes, I wasn’t sold. But I digress.

While a fair amount of this book is Cora and Everett doing it all over the District in interesting and exciting ways, I also feel like I could write an entire thesis on how Kinkade uses sex and intimacy as a metaphor for power and privilege in this series. Like yes, the scenes are hot, and also every time Everett begs, pays for it, or otherwise submits (🍑), he also shares a bit of his privilege with Cora. He theoretically has everything to lose from their relationship (career, power, family, etc.), and he doesn’t just allow it to happen, he chooses to not just give it up, but to give it to her.

Spend more.
"What is your threshold for enough?" she asks after she shows me her new laptop (which prompted me to say, Surely you could have bought a faster processor, to which she responded, Surely you could save some audacity for the rest of us.)
"When we’ve depleted my trust fund," I answer honestly before I resume editing the pictures I took of me railing her in the Lyndon B. Johnson Memorial Grove on the Potomac.

Anyway, this book is excellent. And if you haven’t yet read Streams and Schemes, I do recommend you do that first—not because it’s necessary to understand what’s going on, but just because it’s also very good. 💖