Great plot, well written, some really interesting characters here, good word selection, and very enjoyable up until about the 75% mark.
The problem is the leading lady, Carter. She’s simply an awful person.
Carter gives her best friend, Paige, a pass on (1) sleeping with every guy in the tri-county area, including sleeping with the guy that Carter has a crush on, namely Locke the leading man, behind Carter’s back, (2) kept this from Carter until Paige is minutes from passing away, (3) conceals her pregnancy from the baby’s father, also Locke, so that he misses the first year of his daughter’s life, (4) dies leaving Carter to deal with the mess, and (5) awards sole custody of her baby, Lily, to the mystery father Locke, after Carter has taken care of both dying Paige and baby Lily for the preceding year prior to Paige’s death . . . without so much as a thought as to how this would affect Carter.
That poor passed-away Paige is some friend . . . and she’s adored and lionized through the whole story . . . oddly.
After all that, Carter, without any self-reflection whatsoever, turns around and blames Locke, the guy who knew nothing about any of this, from the moment she sees him. She repeatedly calls him out for being a useless womanizer throughout the whole book, when she doesn’t know him at all, and he’s accomplished and endured more that either Paige or she ever has.
Locke, for his part, is recovering from a professional football career-ending knee injury and dealing with the remnants of his prescribed pain-killer opioid addiction, which he has recently conquered.
Does any of that mean anything to Carter? Oh heavens no. Every time Locke is struggling with pain, even to the point of ending-up back in the hospital from an accidental fall, Carter chooses his weakest moments to spin into an illogical rage . . . even in the hospital ?!?!?!?
Judgmental, histrionic, mean-spirited, and just plain evil, this is the kind of hypocritical, shrill, feminazi any normal man would summarily divorce, or leave at the bus station, whichever could be accomplished more quickly.
The story eventually has a happy ending. But by the time you get there, you’re disappointed that Locke doesn’t kick her to the curb. I was personally rooting for Locke to put her on a plane and ship her back to Florida.
I can’t imagine why this book took a hard turn into never, never land about 75% the way through it. But it got so crazy, I almost chucked it, and I never do that.
I WILL give the next book in this series a read, simply because it pursues two characters that I found interesting in this story. But, I’m telling you (chuckling), if Astor, the next book’s leading lady, turns out to be as useless as this one, you won’t want to miss my next review . . . ;-)