When the Stars Rise by Emery Rose is live!
A childhood-best-friends/second-chance-romance between a pop star and an extreme athlete, this is an emotional and angsty rollercoaster with an epic love and all the feels.
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Blurb
Six weeks. Thirty-five cities. One more chance to get it right.
Noah McCallister.
Extreme athlete. Habitual heartbreaker. The only boy I’ve ever loved.
We’re a tragedy. A beautiful melody with dissonant chords. A soaring ballad of heartache, enduring love, and lost youth.
Despite the unbreakable bond tethering us, we can’t seem to get our act together.
Once upon a time, he was my everything. My once in a lifetime. My past and my future. The white knight who balanced my entire world on the palm of his hand.
Until I lost him.
Now I’m out there reaching for the stars while he’s off chasing his next adrenaline rush.
Cliff diving, rappelling down waterfalls, skydiving… you name it he’s done it.
I’m convinced there’s nothing Noah can’t do. Except for one. He can’t quit.
As his appetite for risk grows more insatiable, I begin to worry that he’s on a quest to cheat death.
Losing him is inconceivable. So I make him an offer he can’t refuse—join me for the final leg of my world tour as the official videographer.
He only agrees because he thinks I need him. But he’s wrong.
Six years ago, Noah saved my life… and now it’s my turn to save him.
Review
3.5 stars
A childhood-best-friends/second-chance-romance between a pop star and an extreme athlete, this is an emotional and angsty rollercoaster with an epic love and all the feels.
This is the 5th book in the Lost Stars series, and though it can be read as a standalone, there are some complicated dynamics to navigate with this one. Noah and Hayley were in the first book of the series as four year old best friends… Beware spoilers for past books while reading this…. Noah is the son of Lila and Brody. He was born during the events of the first book of the series, [book:When the Stars Fall|53123267]. Hayley is the secret daughter that Shiloh gave up for adoption, and we see Shiloh and Brody come together in the second book of the series [book:When the Storm Breaks|57280718], technically making Noah and Hayley step-siblings (though they never saw each other as such as Hayley grew up with her adoptive parents, and they didn’t find out about Hayley’s biological parentage until years later)..
In this book, Noah and Hayley are 22 years old. She’s a famous pop star in the middle of a tour, and he’s a famous Youtuber who found success and fame sharing his passion for death-defying sports. They are best friends, soulmates, each other’s ‘person’, and are madly in love with each other. Though they’ve been together in the past, they’re not currently in a relationship, with a tragic and complex history between them. When Hayley invites Noah to join her on her tour, he drops everything to be there for her as always, both of them hoping that this time, things might end differently for them.
It fucking hurts to think there’s a chance we won’t end up together. I used to believe that she was my end game. The girl I’d marry, raise a family with and grow old with. Never doubted it for a minute when we were younger.
But now I don’t even know if that’s true anymore. Her walls are high, my shields are up, and if there’s any chance of making this work we’d need to take a wrecking ball to our fortress and raize it to the ground.
Whatever we decide, we can’t stay stuck in this limbo forever. It’s not fair to either of us.
There is SO much emotion between these two. You can feel their deep love, their wild attraction for each other, and their easy and natural connection, and I loved the sense of longing and anticipation watching them reunite again. Their backstory is revealed slowly, so it takes a while for us to fully understand their past, all they’ve been through, and the reasons they are not together, and it’s a lot.
There was a time when I didn’t know where he started, and I left off. It’s that soul-deep, unshakable love that, no matter how much time and distance we put between us, our souls will always call each other back home.
He is, and always has been, my one true home.
Unfortunately, we can’t seem to get our shit together.
With both of them so desperate for each other, we watch them inevitably come back together, and I loved how happy they are, how complete they make each other, and how beautiful, natural and passionate their love for each other is. But they both have significant trauma from the past which neither of them have fully dealt with, they don’t know how to resolve the issues that tore them apart last time, and there are still big secrets to be revealed. Collectively, it’s a hot mess that will take a lot of unravelling.
It’s an emotional rollercoaster full of angst. There is push and pull, ups and downs, heartache, trauma and frustration. But in the middle of it all is this beautiful, pure love. They want each other more than anything and can’t keep away, they just have to figure it all out. And after years of back and forth, they finally get to a place where they’re ready and able to do that.
“I carry you everywhere, you know. Even when we’re a thousand miles apart, I still see your face in a crowd. You’ve always been the only one I see.”
It’s a dramatic ride and my heart ached for both Noah and Hayley as they tried to figure it all out. It’s raw and messy, and they both make mistakes along the way, but it felt authentic to the characters, who they are, and all that they’ve been through. There are some unexpected moments, and it was a little drama-heavy for me, but they put in the work, they fight for their HEA, and they do get their happy ending.
We get to see characters from the previous books, and Noah and Hayley have a close group of friends around them. It did take me a little bit to wrap my head around who was who, and I wish I could recall if they tie-in to the couples of the series, but it’s been a while since the last book was released and I just couldn’t remember. But some of those characters are set up for stories of their own, and though this reads as if it’s the final of the series, with a nice full-circle type of ending, I’d be keen to read more.
A beautiful love story, I really enjoyed this one.
3.5 stars.
An Advanced Review Copy was generously provided by the author for an honest review.
Lost Stars
When the Stars Fall (#1) (Jude & Lila)
Review
Buy: Amazon | Paperback
When the Storm Breaks (#2) (Brody & Shiloh)
Review
Buy: Amazon | Paperback
When We Were Reckless (#3) (Jesse & Quinn)
Review
Buy: Amazon | Paperback
When Wrecked Meets Ruined (#4) (Ridge & Evie)
Review
Buy: Amazon | Paperback
About the Author
Emery Rose has been known to indulge in good red wine, strong coffee, and a healthy dose of sarcasm. When she’s not working on her latest project, you can find her binge-watching Netflix, trotting the globe in search of sunshine, or immersed in a good book. A former New Yorker, she currently resides in London with her two beautiful daughters.
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