5 stars I don’t think I’ve ever had anything bad to say about a Zoe York book, which is why I was so excited to receive an ARC of the book from the author. This one does not disappoint. It’s about another one of the Kincaid brothers, Seth. A second-chance love story (my favorite kind), Seth comes back to Pine Harbor and runs into his high school best friend/girlfriend whom he has avoided for the past twenty years. Her name is January. Now, I’ve never met anyone with that name, but okay. What I thought made it extra weird is that her sister was named August, and August named her daughter Summer (and her son Levi). Was February unavailable? I know families can be weird about how they make the choices for their childrens’ names, but I would have liked to know WHY her parents named them after months (and why did August name her daughter after a season?). I mean, I wouldn’t be able to ask a real person, so it would have been nice to have fictional characters’ names explained to me. My quibbles with the female character names did not affect my review, which is really based on the story itself, and on character development (names aside). Zoe York tells stories in a casual voice, like someone would retell a story of something that happened to them, combined with explicit sex scenes and emotional interactions. Still, it’s easy reading, and you shouldn’t expect to run into advanced vocabulary or convoluted sentences. It’s very reader-friendly. It’s told in third-person, past-tense, by an omniscient narrator. I’m not one to include an overview of the story in my reviews because, honestly, the author takes a lot of time crafting a blurb, so who am I to reword it? What I do like to do is share some of my favorite quotes from a story, so here I go. January is quite smitten with Seth, but doesn’t want him to know. In her head, she makes an excuse for why she should take a picture of him (for someone else), and denies that it’s because she wants it. Then the narrator says: “No. Did she? Maybe. Probably not. Possibly.” Seth is also fighting his growing feelings for January, reminiscing, “She was the best part of his life, at the worst time of his life…” There are many questions of what-if? It’s natural to wonder about what could have happened in our lives if we’d made different decisions. Seth and January naturally wonder what could have been if Seth hadn’t enrolled in the Royal Military College and they had stayed together. In the end, they come to realize that the love they shared for one another when they were young was too much for them to cope with when they were young, and they both needed to go off and live their own lives. They needed to mature to truly be thankful one another. January says: “I used to tell myself that we didn’t love each other when we were young. But that’s not exactly true, is it?” He shook his head. “I loved you so much, it was too bright for me to see it as love. And you loved me—so much that you helped me to leave you. Maybe you’re right. Maybe that was a grown-up kind of love we couldn’t appreciate at the time.” The story ends with a teaser for Josh Kincaid’s story next. I’m looking forward to Rebel at Heart. June 17, 2022
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Elizabeth J ConnorWriter. Editor. Proofreader. Archives
September 2022
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