It was a somewhat easy read, it took me a while to connect with the main characters, but once I got in the groove i enjoyed it!

This was good, but it could have been so much better and I feel like it fell short in a lot of ways. I didn't feel the connection with the characters at all, and I felt like it was by force making me try to care about these characters. This is because they had so much trauma and bad things happen to them, that you end having empathy for them but I didn't really feel the romance because of that. This felt like the author just threw in every bad thing and every conceivable trauma she possibly could to cause drama but it just became too much. I think this had a lot of potential, but missed the mark and I did not enjoy it.

Thank you to NetGalley, Bonnie Jo Pierson, and Rising Action Publishing Co. for the eARC of this book.

Unfortunately, I really didn't love this one as much as I had hoped. I struggled to connect with the main characters and felt like there was a case of history repeating itself just so create more drama within the story.

I wanted to love this book but unfortunately it never clicked for me.

There are things I liked! I thought Liliana and Blake’s relationship progression was very sweet. I liked the complicated relationship between Liliana and Renee; nothing felt rushed or overly chummy given their past. I also thought that Maddie was a well written child who was super sweet.

The things that didn’t work for me mostly boil down to the over complication of the plot. It felt like an episode of One Tree Hill where they try to fit in as many tragic and dramatic things as possible. Trauma soup!

This was an easy read and I was never bored - I just wish I connected with the characters more rather than feeling forced into having empathy for them by being told how many awful things have happened to and around them.

Thank you to NetGalley and Rising Action for the eARC!

This was a cute romance. I loved the banter and the setting was perfectly done. I would highly recommend this book!

This was an extremely enjoyable read, although I couldn't connect with the characters.
Everyone grieves in their own way, obviously, but I couldn't feel anything coming from Liliana: she was constantly haunted by the death of her husband and daughter, but it seemed like she only talked about it without really doing anything.
The romance with Blake was natural and progressed beautifully throughout the book. Still, unfortunately, I'm not too fond of the parallels in books, in this case, what happens with him and his daughter that mirrors Liliana's past.
To me, it feels like an easy way out to needlessly complicate the plot.

However, despite this, I liked the story, and it didn't bore me whatsoever.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.