5 STARSI rarely, RARELY give a perfect 5, but at this point in the series, I feel like being one of those annoying readers who gives automatic 5 stars to books without actually reading them because it's inevitable anyway. Just take all my stars, already! Take them all and leave me in my purple haze of Dex.Anyone who have read and enjoyed The Collector will be happy to know Dex is probably as close as you can get to seeing Dante a few years down the line: better swagger, snark for days and rapist facial hair.I was a gentleman over everything. An ass-appreciating gentleman. We are the finest kind of man. I should open my own ass-appreciating gentleman's club one day.This was written like a collection of short stories from Dex' POV at key plot points in the series. A POV I've been desperately waiting for since Dex first appeared in the pages. I just read an alternate POV of a beloved book series that didn't work out for me but this... oh, GOD, this was glorious! Because Dex is the kind of character you want to get to the bottom of. He's like that guy who looks at the world with a bemused smile and you really want to be in on the private joke. And his was a POV that deserved, NEEDED to be told. And you know what? He did not turn out to be a sappy, pussified version of what I've come to know of him (much). He's still a douche of massive, epic proportions but one that you can make absolute sense out of. Not gonna lie, there are scenes that will be brutal to the take no prisoners, Dex and Perry shippers out there, but it was what made this a perfect 5 for me. Because authors often gloss over these details about their MCs for fear of alienating the fans of their heroes and heroines. There are Abby moments and Jenn moments that the sheltered fan wouldn't want to know of, but these were also the moments that brings enormous depth to Dex that will make you remember him 10, 20 books after.I especially loved the treatment of Dex and Jenn's breakup. It wasn't brushed aside as if it's miraculously so easy to say goodbye to something you've been burdened with for 3 years. The gangrened foot analogy was genius. This entire novella was genius. I'm not sure how Dex 2.0 will be executed as we go further along but for the here and now, he was perfectly imperfect.
