A fave for 2020, Southern Sunrise is now live!

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Blurb

Buried secrets never stay hidden in the South

Emily

I fell in love with him when I was fourteen. Under the stars, he told me he loved me, and under the stars we promised to love each other always. But under the stars, he broke my heart by walking away.

He left me without a second glance. I was just an afterthought.
Now he’s back, but this time, I’m not falling for his Southern charm.

Maybe.

It’s time I get my happily ever after, even if part of me wishes he was still mine.

Ethan

I found out on my twenty-first birthday that everything I thought I knew was a lie, and the man I had grown up thinking was my father wasn’t.

The pain I felt blinded me, making it impossible to hear what anyone said.
I left them all behind, including her, my best friend and the woman I was going to marry.

Five years later, I’m back, only to find the woman I still love has another man’s ring on her finger.

She’s going to marry my best friend unless I stop her. And this time, I only have until sunrise to change her mind.

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Review

“You and me, Sunrise, it’s a forever kind of love.”

6 HUGE STARS

OMG, this book! An emotionally stunning second chance romance that is all about healing, forgiveness, and coming home. This book has all the feels and I devoured it from start to finish. I loved every single moment and I’m riding an absolute giddy high of book love, so you’ll have to excuse my epic gushing.

I read this book coming off the previous one – Southern Storm – which I really struggled with. I was honestly terrified going into this book thinking it was going to be an angsty love triangles with characters making silly decision – but no! It’s nothing like what I thought, it’s everything I didn’t know I wanted needed, and it rocked my little world.

Redemption came for me in the first chapter, which is when Ethan finds out the big secret his parents have been keeping (read my not-so-gushy review of Southern Storm if you want details on that one). It’s gutwrenching, but it’s infinitely satisfying as we see Ethan let loose with all of the anger that I was feeling on his behalf (finally giving me an outlet for my own feels), and it sets the scene for the rest of the book as, angry, lost and grieving, he storms out on his family, and the girl he loves.

It’s five long years later when he returns to town, and he is a changed man. He’s been through hell, but he’s ready to face up to his past and finally make amends for leaving the way he did. He knows it’s going to be difficult and that he has a lot to make up for, but it’s time.

And here come the feels!

“This is my home.” … It took me five years to get back here, and every single day is going to be one step in getting my life back.

Ethan very quickly learns that not only has he changed in the time he’s been away, but so have the people he left behind. He shattered them, and they are still grieving his loss, especially the girl he left behind, Emily.

Emily and Ethan fell in love as teenagers, and they were it for each other. First loves, true loves, soulmates, they were planning their future together when Ethan up and left. Emily was left broken, but she has picked herself up and tried to move on, and that includes getting engaged… to Ethan’s best friend of all people. Whaaaaat? If, like me, this particular plot twist turns you right off, don’t fear!

The initial scenes with Ethan and Emily together are fantastic! Full of chemistry and emotion, and that feeling of building anticipation as we revel in all of the longing that is so clear between them. Ethan makes it really clear early on that he wants Emily back, and in epic romance hero style, he lays his heart on the line for her, even as she tries to keep her distance.

“Do me a favor and let me be. If you ever cared about me at all, just let me be.”
He walks to me now, and I don’t move, I can’t. “I’ll let you be,” he says the words. “But for the record, I loved you every single day that I was gone. I loved you every single second. In my darkness, you were my light … “In my pain, you were my strength, and when I looked into the face of evil and fought for my life, you were the reason I wanted to live.”

Oh swoon!

But while Emily is relieved to see Ethan safe, healthy and at home, she can’t trust him with her heart again. It almost destroyed her the last time he left, and she can’t risk it happening a second time. I love Emily – she’s sensible, she’s smart, and she’s absolutely relatable. I could understand her decisions and the way she acted, and I was fully on her side as she held nothing back from Ethan

“You left me,” she says the three words that cut me. “You just left me.” She turns in my arms now. “You left me, and I had to learn how to breathe without my chest hurting. I had to learn how to go an hour without wanting to call you. I had to learn how to wake up and pretend I was okay. I had to learn how to live again.” She puts her head down and cries, and I pull her into my arms. “I can’t survive that again.”
“You don’t have to. You won’t ever have to.”

It’s so emotional, so swoony, and so exciting watching everything unfold between these two! They have a lot to work through, and the feels are intense, and I was in tears watching it all come out. I was feeling everything with them, and I thought their reconnection played out perfectly! Paced well, with so much emotion, it’s realistic, sensible and functional, and the mix of heart-wrenching declarations, sweet moments, and passionate sexy time is mixed well with the laugh-out-loud banter and sense of fun that Ethan and Emily have between them. Their love for each other shines through each and every encounter, and I adored every moment of them together.

“I belong to you, my heart belongs to you in this life, in our past life, and in our next life, it will always be you.”

But Emily isn’t the only one left shattered when Ethan left. His family were all devastated by his abrupt and shocking absence, and he has a lot of fences to mend. One by one, we get to see him make his peace with the people he let down, and oh, my heart. Those special moments are beautifully written with so much emotion, and almost every single one of them had me in tears. He gets the answers he needed, and he is able to explain himself beautifully. I understood and empathised with him, I was never angry with him, and I love how he owned his mistakes and made such an effort to make things right.

“I’m the same man … I just have a few broken pieces.”

It’s epic. It really is. And there’s this sense of the series coming full circle as so many of the things I was wrestling with are resolved, and we get this sense that everything is as it should be – even if the journey to get there was a hard one. If I had to go through the dramatic turmoil of the preceding books to get this story – it was worth it. The feels are there, but without all the angst (which I appreciated) and I finished the book with a massive cheesy grin and happy tears streaming down my face.

“I loved you then, I’ll love you forever.”

It’s a beautiful story of family, forgiveness and healing, and of realising and fighting for the life that you want. An instant favourite, and one of Natasha’s best, I love it so much!

6 stars!

An Advanced Review Copy was generously provided by the author in exchange for an honest review.

Southern Series

About the Author

When her nose isn’t buried in a book, or her fingers flying across a keyboard writing, she’s in the kitchen creating gourmet meals. You can find her, in four inch heels no less, in the car chauffeuring kids, or possibly with her husband scheduling his business trips. It’s a good thing her characters do what she says, because even her Labrador doesn’t listen to her…

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