This was not really my cup of tea. I found it hard to get into and very emotional.

Loved this sequel! I enjoyed revisiting the characters and story, and delving deeper into the web of clues. I thought it was really neat how the first story was told from Aimee‘s perspective, and then this one turned to Carlos/James. There are some surprises, some heartache, and some reconciliation. Very fast paced. So looking forward to the third and final book in the series!

The ending to Everything We Keep left me wanting so much more! There were knots left all tied up and people on the verge of breakthroughs or breakdowns that I never had a chance to see. Everything We Left Behind picks up with James and tells his totally crazy story.



We start with a whammy - his memory comes back. His real memory. That means the person he has been for the past several years is completely erased. The man with a family, children, friends, and a business are wiped away forever as the original person re-emerges. I can't even imagine how confused and disbelieving he must have been. But Kerry Lonsdale took me there! It was amazing - not what happened to him - but how I was brought into that situation and those feelings.



Fast forward a little and we have a family quickly becoming dysfunctional. James' memories pick up with him still together with Aimee, who has moved on and is living a new life. Their conversations and interactions were another brilliant look into the lives of these people. We finally find out exactly what happened with Phil and how James almost died in the first book.



There were a few moments that things got confusing. I wasn't sure which part of the timeline I was in as things jump around quite a bit. Just a tad more streamlining and I think this would have been just about perfect.



*I voluntarily received a review copy of this book*

Thank you to NetGalley for the free digital copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

Note: Do not read this book, until you have read Everything We Keep.

I wanted to badly to like this book. I LOVED Everything We Keep.

This is not to say that it wasn't a good book - it was.
I think that we had heard the original story and saw the struggle with Aimee had trying to get him to realize he was her fiancee.
It was just anti-climatic when he finally realized who he really was.

Wow, what an emotional rollercoaster. You MUST read book 1 before reading this one or you will have no clue what is going on.

It's hard to review this one without spoilers. Let's just say the Epilogue at the end of book 1 sets you up for where book 2 is going, and I was anxious!

....*typing*......*typing*.......um, yeah, I keep deleting what I've typed because it is impossible to give any details.

This was a well written book, and I was seriously pulling for Aimee and Ian.....but they had so many crazy circumstances to deal with. Ian was a rock and his dedication to Aimee was admirable. And James.....well, his life was in a tailspin. I felt really bad for him. Waking up one day with no memory of what he's been doing for the last few years.....and not recognizing people whom he should have definitely recognized....felt bad for everyone!

This 2-book duet was well worth the read and I highly recommend it!

Review by Sandi for Love Romance Books Blog
I was asked by the author or publisher to give an honest review of this book.
I give this one 5 tiaras:

I love this book!!!!
I read this book and loved every minute of it. I actually read the first book and this book back-to-back. I thought that I had already written this review but noticed that I had not just today. I can honestly, say that I cannot wait for the 3rd book.
This book is just as good as the first and ties right into it—it takes you through the life of Carlos, who you now know is James and that Aimee had to give up to move on with her life. He has to decide how to move on and what to do if the fugue actually brings back the real person that he is or once was. His life is going to be chaotic and the life of his new love and son’s will too.
He has to decide how to live the way he will and what to do to help the people he loves to cope with the way that things may become. He also has to figure out a way for his sons to be kept away from the hellish family that is James and he wants to make sure that if James wants to no longer be a father, how he deals with that.
This book deals with all of these problems and more… and James does wake up one day wondering where he is and what the hell has happened. He frightens Carlos’ sons and breaks Natalya’s heart.
This book is up and down and makes your heart break and come back together again and again. You feel for these characters and wonder what you would do in their place and how would you deal with the chaos and wonder.
A great book for a cold night, a snowed in weekend, a delicious cup of cocoa or a glass of wine!


Review by Rose for Love Romance Books Blog

I gave this book 3 Stars

I was given this book for an honest review...
I liked this book. I definitely liked the first one more. As I was reading it was very predictable. The main part that brought it down for me was when Carlos became James again and James did not remember his kids. He had a feeling that they were important to him but he did not know them. He had to relearn everything. Thankful ,Carlos documented everything. He took notes on everyone and everything. However, even as Carlos his family was still lying to him. His neighbor, who he thought was a sweet lady turned out to be James' mother. Once James became himself again he was so mad that she had lied and infiltrated his new family. She had been around his son's. She even went as far to tricking Carlos to come over to her home on the pretense that her internet was not working. When he got there she was not in the living room and he found her computer with a Skype fed already running. On the other end was the one man the James despised however, Carlos did not know him.
James, felt like he went to sleep and when he woke up it was 6 years later. How do you pick up from there. Where do you go from there. Especially, when your own family were the very ones that hurt you and made up a huge facade to begin with. Will he be able to let Aimee go? Will he be able to fall in love again?

This story picks up right where she left us at the end of " Everything We Keep". We get to see more of the story behind Carlos/James and how they both are like but differ at the same time even though they are the same person.
This storyline was more focused on romance, which I'm not a huge fan of but overall I thought it was a great read.

An intriguing set up, but I found it rather confusing. So much so that it didn’t draw me in and I didn’t read very far.

I couldn't get into this book, like I did with the first in the series. I think I wanted more of a continuation on Aimee's story, rather then James/Carlos. We were so invested in her in Everything We Keep & then in Everything We Left Behind, she's pretty much gone. Mentions of her, but nothing from her point of view. And apparently I rather enjoyed her point of view. James/Carlos? Not so much. I was unable to finish this one.

This follow on book to Kerry Lonsdale's Everything We Keep, was just what I needed as I felt the first book left me hanging... A romance with a medical twist, one of memory lose I knew nothing about and found fascinating. I thoroughly enjoyed both books. Kerry managed to keep filling in the missing links all through the book so that it kept you page turning. With a mainly happy ever after ending. A feel good book.

I received this book as an ARC and totally forgot to review it. Everything We Left Behind is a great mystery with romance, and how to find yourself in the midst of confusion. I enjoyed reading the story of James and how he found all forms of love in many different ways. This book did confuse me a bit but I think that was the authors intent. I would recommend this book to just about anyone and it will definitely be a book club read in the future!

This is a sequel to the previous book by Kerry Lonsdale "Everything we keep"
This narrates the story to James/Carlos. James had entered into a dissociative fugue state and had adopted a new identity of Carlos. He lived a full life as Carlos for few years with his 2 sons. When he regains his memory back and comes back to California as James, he realises that life, as he knew it, has changed. And his brother still wants to silence him. To protect his sons, he rushes to his sister-in-law Natalya and the story progresses alternating between moments of his past life as Carlos and present as James. The love stories written are sweet and graceful.
This is a very difficult mental state to write about, and I commend the author Kerry for dealing with it, doing justice to both identities.
The book is both emotional and reflective, the words have a great depth. The story progresses at a steady pace leaving the reader with mystery and intrigue till the book gets over.
This book remained with me for a long time as dissociative fugue state is a scary subject and there is no apparent treatment. So it left me with a feeling of what if....
A great book by Kerry and apparently there is a sequel to this book. So happiness all around...

I enjoyed reading this book. I read it right after reading Everything We Keep. So all the characters were fresh in my mind. I really liked being able to follow more of their stories.

I am seriously loving this series. The characters, the plot and plot twists. It’s exciting and emotional. So excited to get some questions answered and the next book read. I received an ARC e-copy of this book through NetGalley.

The sequel to Everything we Keep, follows the story of Aimee and James however written from James’ perspective.

When James Donato comes out of the fugue caused by the trauma he experienced while in Mexico 6 years ago, he believes life is as he left it. He soon discovers that all is not so and he has two young sons that he does not remember and a fiancé that is no longer his.

This story is about James coming to terms with his loss and moving on as father to two young boys while finding happiness and love with Natalya his boys aunt.

I really wanted to enjoy this as much as the first book Everything we Keep but I found it lacking in some parts. The pace of the story was a bit too slow after James came round from his fugue state which I found frustrating and I was expecting more of a big bang ending. Other I was glad to have read the follow up story and see what had happened from James point of view.

What a delightful book. It was different from what I usually read and that was what I needed. Highly recommend. Just a lovely book

Gosh this is a complex read. One character with two voices and a whole lot of confusing choices to make. Beautifully written so that even with time jumps and all that is going on, the story is still easy to follow.
I thoroughly enjoyed this book but you do need to read book 1 to fully appreciate it.

Following on the heels of her highly successful Everything We Keep, author Kerry Lonsdale continues the story of Aimee and James in Everything We Leave Behind. Six years after the accident that robbed James of any memory of who he is by putting him in a fugue state, James, wakes one day to two little boys in a beachside Mexican town where he is known as Carlos but with no memory of how he got there. The story picks up from there shuffling back and forth between James in the present and Carlos in the past who realizes he is rapidly running out of time as his nightmares bring him closer and closer to confronting the truth his brain is shielding him from. While in the present, James must wade through his anger and betrayal with his brother for having given him this alternate identity, deep anguished loss at Aimee’s having moved on, married and with a daughter, and intense confusion at the odd connection he feels to a woman he loved as Carlos. As James struggles to sift through his emotions and acclimate to his new life, his brother Phil is soon to be out prison and his brother Thomas is desperate for him to remember what happened so they can put Phil away for good.

I have to confess to liking this book less than the first. On the one hand, I recognize the impossibility of the author creating yet another mystery with tense scenes and nebulous half-truths, but unfortunately that is what I loved about the first and had me excited for the sequel. I’m not sure if it is fair to judge on a disappointment in plot when it would have been impossible to continue to sustain another conspiracy without becoming ludicrous, but there it is. That being said, the characters were real and believable and grappled with the very real fallout that someone waking from a fugue state would create. However, the back and forth and the intensely frustrated emotions of James were a bit wearing and it took me considerably longer to finish this book as I found it harder to stay with it.

Lonsdale writes characters well and is not high-handed with the steamy romance scenes which are sure to be a pleaser to romance readers. I think for me though the previous book was both romance and mystery, and this book was more just romance/light fiction. I would be very interested in following other mystery/suspense books that Lonsdale writes in the future, but am not likely to continue this series as the main appeal to me was the in the suspense.

Thanks to Lake Union Publishing and Netgalley for an ARC of this story in exchange for an honest review.

Everything We Left Behind

The highly anticipated sequel to Everything We Keep, Everything We Left Behind tells James' story as he wakes from his fugue state after more than six years.

I really enjoyed this book, it's a beautiful story that reminds us just what is important in life. I do think that you definitely need to read the first book before trying this one. Four stars from purplebookstand.

I was lucky to be provided with a copy of this book and voluntarily reviewed it.