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Review
4 stars
This book is both a beautifully sweet YA romance, and a second-chance-romance with strong themes of friendship and family. It’s the kind of beautifully written story I have come to expect from KA Tucker, and it’s a great read.
Piper Calloway lives a privileged life, her family’s wealth ensuring that she wants for nothing. But the one thing she didn’t want was to be 16 years old and spending her summer as a camp counsellor. It’s where her mother spent her childhood and she is being sent there to appreciate ‘real’ life and experience the simple things.
“You’ll make friends for life here. People you can call up twenty years from now, for anything, and they’ll be there for you. I promise you, you won’t regret these days, ever.”
Things start looking up for Piper when, on her first day, she meets fellow counsellor Kyle Miller. Gorgeous and confident, and known for his fun-loving, trouble-making ways, Kyle immediately hones in on Piper and an instant attraction blossoms between them. Kyle’s life couldn’t be more different from Piper’s, his family struggles for money, and with his father and brothers in prison, he tries his best to separate himself from the perceptions people have of him. But those differences mean nothing to the two teens who spend their summer flirting, bantering, having fun and falling in mad, all-consuming love.
Thirteen years later and Piper is right where she wants to be – in line to take over her family’s property development company. It’s a position she’s worked her whole life for, and she is making a name for herself in the business, though struggling to overcome misogynistic behaviour in her male-dominated workplace. Her life is busy and it’s just the way she likes it…. but then Kyle comes back into her life, employed as the security guard for her building. Things are about to get a whole lot more complicated.
Even after all these years, with college and boyfriends, and my career and my engagement to David, Kyle Miller has always been a sliver in my heart, a shadow in my thoughts. A lingering “what if” that I have never been able to truly shake.
Kyle is initially standoffish with Piper, but she isn’t one to be deterred. She’s convinced he has come back into her life for a reason, and as all of those feelings from so long ago come rushing back to the surface, she’s determined to see if there is any hope of something happening between them again. But Kyle has secrets. Not only about what why he has suddenly reappeared in Piper’s life, but also about what tore them apart in the past, and the ramifications will leave a lasting impact.
Kyle may not have forgotten me, but he doesn’t seem to want to remember us.
I really enjoyed this story. It’s written entirely from Piper’s POV, with the chapters alternating between past and present. Each part of the story was so engaging that I would find myself completely caught up in whatever chapter I was reading, not ready to move on when the next chapter started, only to become completely wrapped up in the next part of the story.
The book did seem really long though. It was slow moving, with a lot of attention paid to Piper’s job which, while interesting, wasn’t the part of the story I was interested in reading about. The actual reconnection took a long time to happen, and I would have loved for that to be the focus of the story, but it felt kind of intertwined with the other stuff happening in Piper’s life. More like women’s fiction than pure romance. Not that that’s a bad thing, I just would have loved to see more of the love story. I actually thought their romance as teenagers seemed a lot stronger than as adults. In the present there just seemed to be something lacking for me, and I’m thinking it’s because grown up Kyle seemed a bit… weak perhaps? That confidence that glowed from him as a teenager was missing as an adult, which made the differences between them (an issue which Kyle struggles with) all the more prominent. Piper is a strong, confident, woman, and I loved her bravery in confronting Kyle and putting herself out there, but it felt like she was the driving force behind it all, and he just sort of went along for the ride. That feeling of all-consuming love wasn’t there, and I would have liked to have seen some more feels from Kyle.
But this was still a really good read. KA Tucker writes beautifully, and she’s given us a gorgeous story of first love, friendship, family, strength, and finding your person no matter what stands in your way.
“You remembered.”
“Of course I did. I remembered everything.”
I listened to this as an audiobook, narrated by Devon Sorvari, and she does a great job bringing it to life. I definitely recommending listening to this one.
4 stars.