Playing Through Every Choices Book, In Order (Part 60: Open Heart, Book 3)

Hey! Today we wrap up our residency at Edenbrook while dealing with a whole lot of drama, a doctor randomly into BDSM, and our looming future!

Next time, we set off around the world as we blog and livestream our journey. With new friends we just so happened to meet, and a demanding boss, can we make the most of our adventure?

Link to previous reviews: https://www.reddit.com/user/stresseatingdog/comments/sj3s3m/all_choices_reviews_megapost/

SPOILER WARNING, AS ALWAYS

Open Heart, Book 3

M/C: Lance Valentine

Final LI: Bryce

Favorite Chapter: Chapter 11

Favorite Character(s): Bryce, Jackie, Rafael, Sienna, Aurora, Ines, Tobias

Least Favorite Character(s): Leland, Elijah

Overall Rating: 7/10

Review:

Fun fact: before I played this book, I was originally planning on having Ethan as my final LI. However, this book made me switch to Bryce instead, for a few reasons. First, and I’m sure a lot of people knew I was going to talk about this: THE BDSM SCENE. Firstly, even if you’ve never romanced Ethan before, he still asks if you want to have sex? Secondly, it just comes out of nowhere, with zero context or buildup. It’s just Ethan being like, I’m sad, so let’s have BDSM sex! Like, huh? Thirdly, the scene highlights one of the main issues with this book: it's too Ethan-centric. He has more diamond scenes, more dialogue, more interactions, and more plotlines than any of the other three LI’s. I mean, the whole series before now also gave Ethan more than the other three LI’s, but not to the degree this book does. I, who really liked Ethan, and had romanced him a lot through the first two books, completely ditched him for Bryce in this book because I just really felt like he was being shoved down my throat too much. I would have definitely scaled back Ethan’s dominance over the romance in this game, for sure. The overall plot of the book also just doesn’t feel cohesive compared to the first two. Like, the book can never decide whether what Bloom is doing to the hospital is good or bad, and we don’t get much resolution for the issue beyond Naveen literally blackmailing Bloom to stop being so involved. The stuff with Ethan’s trial and Naveen’s mistake comes kind of out of nowhere and I wish there had been more buildup to it. It kind of felt like the writers needed an easy way to make Ethan end up as Chief of Medicine, and M/C head of the diagnostic team, by the end, so they concocted the malpractice lawsuit. Elijah is insufferable when he gets all bitchy with you, especially when he was all supportive of you helping Mrs. Martinez in Book 1. Suddenly, he’s not ok with stretching the rules to help patients anymore? I hate that we have to apologize to him, in a diamond scene no less, when he was the one out of line. I loved Ines's wedding though, and that whole chapter was really fun, and it was nice meeting Bryce's criminal mother, though it's weird that his father didn't show up. The ending is sort of bland to me. It's sweet, but it just doesn't feel that resounding. Also, where did Kyra go lol. I know she said she'd go traveling and stuff, but surely they could have brought her back for the final chapter? All in all, I don't hate this book, and it has its high points (for me, the dirty thirty with Bryce on the roof), and its lows (BDSM Ethan), but it just didn't stick with me like Book 1 or 2 did. However, I still really enjoyed the series as a whole, especially because, like I said in Book 1's review, its the nicest Pixelberry's been to us gay guys, probably forever lol.