Audio note: The audio is excellent! Samantha Brentmoor always gives stellar performances, and she was even better than usual here. Liam is British, and her accent for him blended seamlessly with the rest of her narration. As always, Shane East delivered a great performance as the conflicted Brit, infusing a lot of emotion into the story. I think this is the best I’ve heard him as well. At around 10 hours, this was a full-day binge, but I was fully engaged in the story the whole way through. It’s also a very slow burn, so you could probably listen to a good portion of it at the office… as long as you don’t mind tearing up in front of your co-workers, lol. It’s a powerful story, and one that is made even better by the audio. Highly recommended in the format.


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With a torturous slow burn that finally snaps with the most electric kind of tension, a seriously swoony tortured hero, and a storyline that made my chest ache, this was even better than I expected. I liked the first book in the series, but my complaint was that it didn’t FEEL like one of Sorensen’s books, and this was the exact opposite experience. It had everything that I love about her work, from a focus on the slowly building emotional connection, tender moments, and hearty dose of swoon. I loved watching the dynamic between these two shift as they gradually opened up and got to know each other better. It’s a heavy storyline in a lot of ways, but it’s brightened up by a truly spectacular love story. This is “it’s always been you” done right, and I fell for the hero a little deeper with every layer that was revealed. It made me smile, it made me cry, it made me rub my chest with a burst of feels. This snuck up on me in the best of ways, and ended up being such a powerful romance - I loved it!

The story follows Zoe and Liam, two people who are still reeling from the deaths of mutual friends when their lives are thrown into chaos. Liam’s best friend left a young daughter behind, and for some inextricable reason he left her in the care of both Zoe and Liam - two people who have never gotten along. They’ve clashed from the day they met a decade ago, so becoming co-guardians to a little girl is the last thing either one wants, especially when Liam has always made it clear that he doesn’t want a family. But neither has much choice in the matter, and it’s not long before they’re living together and navigating guardianship. Spending time in close quarters threatens to expose the secret that Liam has been hiding for years - he never truly hated Zoe at all.

I knew from book one in this interconnected series that this storyline was going to be heavy, and it is definitely that. It made my heart ACHE sometimes, and the angst did something to my blood pressure. It’s a super slow burn, but there are these little breadcrumbs along the way that made the whole thing worth it. Liam is a complex character who needs to let down his walls before they have any chance of making it to the other side, and I adored the depth of his feelings. I’m not the biggest fan of “it’s always been you” romances unless the hero took that seriously - and I absolutely believed it here. Liam is a stubborn grump who refused to make his feelings known because of “reasons,” but it was incredibly fulfilling to watch him slowly lower his walls. And when those feelings were finally out in the open? It was the most pulse-pounding intimacy I’ve read in a long time, made even richer by the wait. This far exceeded my expectations, and might be my new favorite from the author.