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Review
4.5 stars
This is a heartachingly beautiful story of a woman who has lost the love of her life and been left alone to raise their four young children. And in heartbreaking, sweet, and sometimes funny, detail, we get to journey with her through her grief, and her slow recovery as she learns to live again.
The prologue of this book introduces us to Liz and Grady together, and just from those few short pages, the incredible love between them is evident, and I was in tears as they said their final goodbyes. The story then picks up six months later with Liz lost in world without Grady. She is absolutely broken by her grief and struggling to hold her life together.
I could hear the kids cry out for me from the back, but my grief had consumed me by now. I was useless. I was an empty shell. I was pathetic and helpless and so utterly lost I didn’t even know where to go.
…
It felt unfair of them to expect so much of me. Didn’t they know how much I hurt? Didn’t they know that it took everything I had to get up in the morning and face the day?
This pain inside me drowned me; it tore at me every second of every day until I thought I would shatter into a million worthless pieces just from the sheer pressure of it.
I couldn’t do this.
I couldn’t.
And I didn’t know what to do about that because there was no one else to shoulder this impossible burden with me.
I was alone. And I had never been this alone before.
I just didn’t know what to do.
A friend of mine said that this book is full of raw emotion, and I absolutely agree with her. Liz’s pain is described almost brutally, and I was in tears so many times as she tried so hard to just keep going. And it’s not even that she’s battling to get over Grady, she has to deal with the fact that she doesn’t want to get over him.
I couldn’t let him go.
I didn’t want to let him go.
Letting him go meant acknowledging that he would never come back. And I just couldn’t. I needed him too much.
I loved him too much.
It is during this time that Ben comes into her life. Ben moves into the house next door, and befriends Liz, helping her out and just generally ‘being there’, even though she never asks anything of him.
“Why are you so nice to me? You barely know me.”
A soft smile played on his lips, “But I like what I know so far. And I am excited for what else there is to find out.”
It is clear that Ben has feelings for her, and the more time they spend together as he makes himself a part of her family’s life, she slowly starts to feel something for him as well. But it’s a hard road that they are on. Liz clings to the memory of her husband, and struggles hugely to accept Ben in her life, and there is a lot of back and forth. But even though Liz has no intention of ever moving on from Grady, and resists her feelings as much as she can, she can’t help but start to fall for him. And he is absolutely beautiful with her!
His hands cupped my shoulders and held me still so that he could look into my frightened eyes. “Liz, you didn’t make things awkward between us. This isn’t the right time, I get that. Don’t feel bad. I’m not in a hurry. It’s alright. I can wait.”
Ben is all kinds of amazing! He is wonderful with her kids, and he makes no secret of the fact that he loves them deeply. He also makes no secret of his feelings for Liz, and while he puts up with a lot from her, and is infinitely patient with her, he’s not a doormat. He is gentle, but he pushes her as well – pushes her to start living again, and to accept all that life had to offer, including everything that he wants with her.
“I’m going to be gentle with you, Liz. We’re going to treat this delicately. I’m going to let this happen slowly, let us fall slowly. But I am not asking too much of you.”
“I can’t take anymore heartbreak,” I confessed on a broken whisper.
“Then it’s a good thing I’m not going to break your heart.”
And even as tentative as things seem between them, they still joke around, and I loved how Ben was able to bring that back into Liz’s life.
“She’s my mom and she’s never seen me this happy before. Of course, she thinks I love you.”
I braved a look at him. “And do you?”
“If I deny it, will you be able to get through dinner?”
I nodded, ignoring the thin veil of his words over the truth I didn’t want to accept. “Then I don’t love you. You’re the most aggravating woman I’ve ever met. I can barely tolerate you.”
“And my kids?”
“Oh, no,” he chuckled. “I definitely love them.”
“You do?” An aching affection flooded my body, filling in all of the cracks that fear and uncertainty had left me with. An emotional heat bubbled in my chest and wrapped my stiff limbs with something like hope.
“Yes, I do. But they agree with me about you. You aggravate us all.”
Liz’s kids are amazing. Aged 8, 6, 4 and 2, they are challenging and at different stages of being able to understand what is happening. They are resilient, but they suffer, and watching them, one by one, come to the realisation that their Daddy was gone was tragic. Literally every time one of the kids cried, I cried right along with them. It was heartbreaking, but also beautiful getting to see them be there for each other as a family, and start to accept everything and move on.
I loved this book. Yes, it’s heartbreaking, and I’m glad I waited until I was in the right frame of mind to start it, but I loved it. Liz’s story is both tragic and uplifting, but it’s beautifully written and I could feel everything that she was going through. And the romance – while necessarily a slow build – was gorgeous.
Beautiful – 4.5 stars.
An Advanced Reader Copy of this book was generously provided by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.