But somehow they tend to communicate like people who have been to years of therapy and picked up all lingo and not like normal people. Sometimes they misunderstand each other, but there's no...accidentally hurting each other or being thoughtless or anything like that. It's just...too seamless? I guess?

I totally get what you mean. I think in the wake of the heightened awareness of problematic interaction in fictional romances that was really normalized for a long time, we’ve swung a bit too far in the opposite direction to try to correct it — which in turn kind of takes some of the crackle and spark out of the romance if there’s never ANY misunderstanding or unwise or heated feelings. I think it also removes the stories of authentic human behavior a bit sometimes. Like, you can try to make your characters totally un-problematic, but what actual human being alive shares that quality, and therefore how can they possibly feel authentic?

Anyway, I haven’t read this one and probably won’t because adult fantasy isn’t my genre, so I don’t have any perspective on it. But re: your last point — sometimes we just don’t have that Spark with stuff even when technically it checks all our boxes! Idk if it is possible for humans and books to have chemistry, but I think it’s kinda like that. 😂