LOVED! Women's fiction with a sinister undertone - so fun. I love an ill-fated lovers story & this didn't disappoint. This was such.a great novel. I'll read anything that CL writes! 4.5 stars

Another auto buy author for me! I loved this book as much as Too Good to be True! In this dual time line domestic drama, it's a fight for love. Jealousy has consumed Sabrina over her true love Jake. Unfortunately for her, Jake’s heart belongs to Molly. Fast forward a decade, Molly is married to Hunter living in an affluent town with their daughter. When she meets Sabrina in a yoga class they become fast friends but this friendship is one-sided with secrets to destroy lives. Do we really ever forget our first love? This book has all the feels and was unputdownable!

I was approved for an e-arc of this title from NetGalley and the publisher (thank you!!) but due to crazy life, I purchased a print copy but listened to over 90% of this book via audio and it was a pleasure!

I am so thankful to early reviewers noting this was more romance/drama with some suspense (vs. mystery/thriller) and I was aware of that going in.

I really loved Can’t Look Away! It was unputdownable and so difficult to pause in the wee early hours of the morning to ensure I would be functional the next day.

I cared for all these characters. There were so many emotions, nothing was black and white. They were all written so well and I am very satisfied with the conclusion. This is a book I will want to read again!

Audio performances by Karissa Vacker, Caitlin Davies, and Zachary Webber were phenomenal. I highly recommend the audio!

Every day Molly Diamond focuses on moving one foot in front of the other in her new life. She has a wonderful attentive husband named Hunter and beautiful little girl Stella. Living in the suburbs can be lonely at times, the small town of Flynn Cove, not that many miles from Manhattan feels a world away. The local women are obsessed with labels, decorating and the local country club. Molly misses her old friends, the noise of the city and she hasn’t been able to write a word since the day she left. Trying to be optimistic, Molly welcomes Sabrina into her life. The two meet at yoga and then again at a fertility clinic. With instant chemistry Molly finally feels like she found a friend. Sabrina invites Molly and Hunter to dinner and when they arrive the door is opened by none other than Jake Danner, the long lost love of her life. Molly has spent every day of the last ten years trying not to think about Jake, a beautiful and talented musician that lit Molly’s heart on fire. Their tumultuous and passionate affair tore their young hearts apart. What a small world, calm cool Sabrina remarks. Filled with pain and confusion, this new adult version of Jake leaves Molly breathless, his appearance quickly turning their lives upside down. As their story unravels flashing back between past and present, it is hard for Molly to believe this was all a coincidence. Fast paced suspenseful romance, I devoured this perfect beach read with a twist!

I would give this book 3 1/2 stars. It was a good read but not a great one. Rock singer Jake Danner sees Molly Diamond at one of his concerts and it was love at first sight. They start dating but he already had a girlfriend, Sabrina who he breaks up with. Sabrina is heart broken. She becomes obsessed with Jake and Molly. She stalks them and tries very hard to break them up. Jake loves Molly deeply but he is obsessed with his music and writing songs. He gets into a low point with Molly and a high point with his band. Molly leaves Jake. A decade later Molly is married to Hunter and has a beautiful daughter. She is a yoga teacher in Flynn Cove and wants desperately to have another baby but after rounds of IVF it doesn't look promising. Sitting in her specialists office she meets a woman who she befriends and they become best friends. When she meets her friend's husband the world falls apart around Molly. So the story delves into the lies and deceptions of all the characters. It is a book that keeps you wanting to find out how it will end but is also a book where you wonder if such an obsession would really make you do such horrendous things.
Thanks to #netgalley, #stmartinspress and @carolatlovering

3.5 rounded up.

I really enjoyed a lot of things about this book. I'd put this in the domestic drama/suspense type of genre- so don't go in expecting a thriller! But I enjoyed all the different POV's.. it helps to better understand the characters feelings and thought processes. It was pretty romantic and tugged at my heartstrings on several occasions. Some parts of the plot were predictable but it was still an enjoyable read and I enjoyed the way the author laid it out, she really built a strong connections to the characters.

One of the main things that turned me off of the book is that the obsessed stalker in this book kind of screwed herself. I didn't fully understand the thought process there, but maybe that means I'm not insane (hahahah).

Overall, I'll be looking for more from this author in the future!

Thank you to NetGalley, St. Martin's Press and author for providing me a free digital ARC in exchange for an honest review. Publication Date: 6/14/22.

Well, right off the bat I will say that I’ve read more than a few books with a similar plot as this; however, I didn’t mind. Maybe it was a timing thing. I haven’t been interested in deep, literary fiction lately. I found this to be an enjoyable summer read that didn’t require much concentration or brain power. The description says it’s a thriller but I wouldn’t say that. It’s got some twists but nothing too shocking. I liked the characters. The chapters were short. It wasn’t too dark. I would feel comfortable recommending it for a quick and easy book to throw in your beach bag.

Can’t Look Away is a quick read that flips back and forth between characters and clearly identified dates in the timeline. Definitely a good summer read!
Thank You to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for the opportunity to read this ARC!

To get some things out of the way first, this is a domestic drama with some suspense but it is not a thriller or a mystery book as it seems to be marketed. It was still an enjoyable book for its genre, but it was not what I thought it would be going in. So just a heads up with that.

It reminds me of one of my dramatic movies that I watch that doesn’t really have any huge twists but it still builds up enough drama that I want to keep going to learn about the characters and find out what happens to them in the end. That being said it’s based upon mollys life in her 20s and then when she’s married and in her 30s. She is taken back to the past when her ex has a hit song on the radio and this all plays into the present. She ends up making a new friend, but maybe this friend has some secrets that Molly doesn’t know about. How this impacts mollys life will have you turning the pages.

A rockstar and a commoner fall in love, but with a grownup twist. That's right, famous singers and regular girls can fall in love outside of new-adult romances and it allows for so much angst and drama. With a thriller undertone, Can't Look Away follows Molly, Jake, and an unknown onlooker through the past and present as Molly and Jake's lives intersect. Through college days and early notoriety for Jake's band, Danner Lane, to their lives today, with families of their own and long-buried heartache. Of course, as a famous bad boy, everyone wants Jake and everyone has eyes on Jake. In particular, one woman has her eyes on Jake and her obsession soon includes Molly. Can't Look Away follows the characters through love, loss, and the impact they have on you for the rest of your life.

I truly enjoyed Molly, she's every girl when they first find real love and every girl when that love gets away, even if it's a decision they make themselves. Sure, it feels a little young at first, but as the story moves forward, so too does Molly grow and mature. Somehow, Lovering manages to capture that feel of young love, the promise of forever, the choices we must make, and the love that we find that grounds us forever. I loved the feel of youthful romance Molly has with Jake, the challenges he sets for himself and changes he makes for her, as well as the heartbreaking reality of what life really can put you through with time. Their lives are separate, yet still so entangled, because that's just how life truly works. You don't forget anything, you carry it with you, and she captures the essence of that emotion, of that knowledge we all have inside us, so incredibly well. Plus, we've got that third character who is looking on with judgement and disdain. It heightens the story a bit, taking it from just love and life to a bit of a domestic thriller.

I loved the premise of Can't Look Away, but it ended up being too predictable very early on. Our secondary voice is revealed too soon and it was easy to connect the dots from there. I flew through this one, Carola Lovering is a great writing with a flair for the dramatic, but I just needed less predictability. The thriller aspect added to the story quite well, but I needed more of it.

Overall, Can't Look Away is a solid, one-go read that I really enjoyed. I think readers will enjoy it, no matter whether they're a romance fan or a thriller fan, because it hits both quite well. I'd love to see a movie of this, just with a bit less spoilers.

This book was so amazing! Such a great mystery with second chance love and twists! Absolutely loved this one!

“He was hers. How was it possible? She often though of Jake’s ex, of the girl who’d tried and failed to make him stay. She couldn’t imagine the pain of living someone like Jake and having him not love her back.”

Molly and Jake fall in love when they lock in a NYC bar—he is on stage with his band and she is in the crowd—and things quickly progress from there. However a decade later Molly is living a small, wealthy town in Connecticut, married to Hunter. She befriends a woman named Sabrina, who may have some ulterior motives in becoming Molly’s friend. Told in alternating storylines and from different povs, this book explores both of Molly’s relationships and what led her to the life she ultimately chose.

So yesterday I was stuck on the couch nursing a sprained ankle. I started a different book, but after 100ish pages I decided it wasn’t for me, so I picked this one up. And that title is 100% accurate because I could not look away from this story. When you start and finish a book in the same day you know it’s a good one. I loved loved Lovering’s last book, Too Good to Be True, and after this one she has cemented herself in my list of favorite authors. I bought her debut book Tell Me Lies after reading TGTBT and I’m contemplating starting it tonight because I honestly cannot get enough of this woman’s writing. So twisty, so insightful, so well-written—this was an easy five stars.

CAN’T LOOK away was a highly entertaining genre-mash up by Carola Lovering. Part-domestic suspense, part-romance, the story follows star-crossed young lovers Molly and Diamond and Jake Danner. Years later, Molly is living life in suburbia with her husband Hunter, a life far from the one she had envisioned.

I enjoyed watching secrets from Molly’s past emerge and I couldn’t help but wonder what happened to the love that Molly and Jake shared. While this isn’t a typical domestic suspense book, there were many questions swirling in my brain about what had happened in the past. I appreciate that the author took the story in a different direction than I was initially expecting.

This was my first book by Lovering and I’m excited to pick up her backlist books! Be sure to toss CAN’T LOOK AWAY into your beach bag this summer.

Many thanks to St. Martin’s Press and NetGalley for an electronic ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This is the second book by Lovering that I have read. She just gets better with each book. This is a story that lives up to it's title. I literally could not look away. Once I started it, I devoured it to the very end. It is a definite page-turner!

Molly and Jake are the perfect couple and so in love... until they aren't anymore. Molly moves on but when the past comes crashing back into her world, that's when the creepiness starts. Nothing and no one is who they seem to be anymore.

Can't Look Away is an exciting thriller that will have you on the edge of your seat. Start it and believe me, you won't be able to look away.

When Molly and Jake make eye contact at a concert, Jake the lead singer of an up-and-coming band, and Molly an aspiring writer, they each know that moment is the start of a life together. But things don't always go as planned, and sometimes, love is not enough. Several years later, Molly is happily married living in a small but wealthy town. She has a beautiful daughter, handsome husband, and comfortable home, but something in her life feels empty - that is until Sabrina and her husband move to town and Molly suddenly feels like she has a true friend to connect with. But not everything is as it seems, and Molly is in for some shocking discoveries and challenging decisions as she is forced to rediscover herself.
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Overall, this book was really well-written. The characters had depth, even the secondary characters. However, it was labeled mystery/thriller, and in no way do I think it fits into this genre. If anything, it is more general fiction/romance. I would definitely recommend this book, but not if you are looking for or expecting a thriller. The emotional depth of the book was superb, but was overall slightly anticlimactic (especially with the thriller label).
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Thank you to the author, St. Martin's Press, and NetGalley for a copy of this ebook in exchange for an honest review. #CantLookAway #NetGalley

Thank you NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for this e-ARC in exchange for my honest review.

What a complex thriller this was! Molly was such a great character. I loved learning about her past with Jake and then switching to her present life with her snobby mom friends. I also loved how this book was told from different characters' perspectives. Hearing from the other characters made this book so suspenseful and I was devouring each page wondering what was going to happen next. Highly recommend this thriller filled with drama, love, jealousy, and obsession!

"Maybe happiness is what you surrender to, not what you fight for."

Sometimes love shouldn't be so hard, maybe it shouldn't hurt so much, is one of the many themes to be found in the suspenseful romance drama Can't Look Away by, becoming an auto buy author for me, Carola Lovering.

This story begins in 2013 with Molly locking eyes with sexy lead singer Jake at a club and realizing her life will never be the same.

By chapter two it's 2022 and Molly is married to Hunter with an almost 6 year old daughter living in the suburbs. How did she get here? Where's Jake? Who's Hunter?

As the story goes back and forth in time and we see Molly and Jake's love unfold we see the pressures of rising stardom, self doubt, and why being in love isn't always for the young.

But do you even have a chance when outside forces, like a stalking ex girlfriend, schemes to take advantage of your insecurities?

Told from Molly and Jake's POVs, narrators Karissa Vacker and Zackary Webber give real performances of being in love, of scarifies and of selfishness. The joy, the anger and the sadness that love can bring is written and performed with raw honesty.

There is one more POV, that of the ex girlfriend, who is a bit crazy, and performed by, ecstatically chewing up the scenery, narrator Caitlin Davies. I can't say much about this character, including her name, because she uses a few names and one of them has a reveal that, though not startling, was definitely unsettling for me. I do wish she had more of a comeuppance but I can be petty about stalkers. But I am not petty about true love and with this bittersweet dramatic romance I Can't Look Away.

I received a free copy of this book & audiobook from the publishers via #netgalley for a fair and honest review. All opinions are my own.

I really enjoyed this one. I wouldn't say it was super suspenseful but the pacing was good and any time you have a character who's obsessed enough they start to try and ruin someone else's life, a certain level of unpredictability comes into play. A wildcard you might say. Domestic drama, women's contemporary fiction, whatever you want to call it, it was a stalker novel, and it was a woman stalking another woman over a man.

I have a weakness for rockstars and Jake filled his role perfectly. The tortured artist with a bad past, charming, but moody, I loved his character for this role. Molly was harder for me to like because I felt like she was always seeking validation from others and never herself. Also an artist, a writer, the two have chemistry that just won't quit! We see their relationship from the past until it implodes along with Molly's present where she has seemingly moved on, even though the song remains, lol. Sabrina is a whole other situation and I won't say much about her other than she's the key that causes past and present to collide.

Great pacing, enjoyed the story telling and this one kept me engaged to the end, I enjoyed it.

**Many thanks to NetGalley, St. Martin's Press, and Carola Lovering for an ARC of this book!**

Have you ever been trapped on a subway car with a couple that just SHOULD NOT be together...and you get to subsequently listen to their petty and obnoxious argument?

Now picture that one half of this couple is a highly overrated and slightly washed up alt-country star...and the other half is an obsessive fangirl who just couldn't move on.

Then toss in the 'one that got away' for the man to stare at longingly from across the car...and you'd (somewhat) have this book.

Said musician is Jake Danner, leading man of a band called Danner Lane, and at a concert in 2013 he meets Molly Diamond, a would-be writer. He writes her a song, titled fittingly "Molly's Song" (heavy eye roll) that helps propel the band to fame, but Jake's bad behavior (you can guess what that is) and other circumstances drive the couple apart.

Years later, Molly has put aside well, ALL of her has-been dreams, from being Mrs. Rock Royalty to being a star novelist and has settled into domestic bliss with Hunter, a friend who became much more, and is raising a young daughter Stella. She doesn't quite fit in to the wealthy suburb, however, and trying to have another child has made her feel lonely and frustrated. Amidst these IVF struggles, she just HAPPENS to meet Sabrina at her yoga studio, a woman who can SO relate (OMG) and Molly feels she's finally found a kindred spirit. But just how close IS Sabrina to Molly? Was this chance encounter a coincidence...or a highly orchestrated move from a woman who knows more than just the lyrics to Molly's Song...but their inspiration itself? Is she there to provide a shoulder...or to simply tackle some unfinished business of her own?

After mixed feelings about my last Lovering book (namely that the big twist was simply revealed too soon, and was followed by a bit too much exposition) this striking cover caught my eye and I figured I'd give this one a try. I'm all for a good story of obsession. HOWEVER what I did not bargain for from the beginning with this book is that much like giving a feline a bath, this one was mostly a catty, and soapy mess.

These characters were not only unlikable to me, but were ridiculously immature. Jake, who is supposedly such a drool worthy rock god that we are supposed to ignore the fact that he's...a stereotypical, womanizing rocker. He's also referred to as "Tim McGraw meets Kurt Cobain." Blech. And don't get me started on his TERRIBLE lyrics...I think there was more than one reason the band struggled. But that's neither here nor there in terms of this story.

This bouncing timeline was just one more thing to add to the overall frustration I felt while reading this book. I understand it was necessary in some respects, but it wasn't executed well and most of the 'past' sections could have been shorter, or just eliminated entirely, because they felt repetitive. We get it: Molly thinks he's the perfect man and can't get over him. Their relationship was incredible until it (unsurprisingly) wasn't.

It also bothered me that childbearing (or the lack thereof) seemed to be such a sore point for these characters. For me, this sort of just reinforces the narrative that women have to have children in order to feel fulfilled or whole, and that notion sort of makes me uncomfortable. I feel lucky to have had my son every day, but if it hadn't been in the cards for me, then that would have been it. It isn't "Well of COURSE you're going to spend 30k+ on IVF: for everyone. I respect that everyone has different views on this subject, but I just didn't like the amount of emphasis placed on this aspect of the story.

Perhaps my biggest struggle, though, was this dialogue. The characters really did sound like they'd just waltzed off the set of a soap opera, or a bad daytime talk show. I rolled my eyes many times, and the sappy 'perfect' ending just solidified that feeling. This is also in NO WAY a thriller, or even a suspense book, so other than some semi-obsessive behavior, there's nothing scary or intriguing here. I'd cite some examples. but I didn't pick any at the time and don't have any desire to relive those moments.

Finishing this one, however, was much like the end of the aforementioned cat bath: I got through it, but I can't say it was worth my time....and now *I* just feel like I need a long shower.

2.5 stars, rounded down

Thank you to NetGalley, St Martin’s Press and Carola Lovering for the free e-book in exchange for an honest review.

I expected a lot more action in this one, but you don’t need it at all. This one is hard to put down and although I could see some aspects coming, there was always a twist that I hadn’t seen coming. I couldn’t stop reading and really enjoyed the look back into their past and their relationship. Can’t look away was a fast paced, multiple perspective look into young love and I would highly recommend.