Ford Whitmore had a plan. Become an attending physician, work hard, and earn a promotion to program director. Most importantly, don't let anything get in the way.
Zoey wasn't supposed to be a complication. She was supposed to be a secret.
For six months, she was both. Until the day he chose his career over her and walked away without a real explanation. What he didn't know – what she didn’t get a chance to tell him – was that she was carrying his child.
She's done being someone's secret. Done doubting her own worth. And she's not about to let a week on a tropical island change that.
Ford has other ideas.
Worth the Risk is a story about choosing ambition over love and learning too late what you've lost. About secrets that protect and secrets that destroy. And about the moment you realize that the only risk that truly matters is letting someone see you completely.
Courtney Mack is a romance author living in the Midwest with her husband and two kids. Her books are full of angst, fun, and all have a guaranteed happily ever after.
I wanted to like this one more than I did, because there are actually a lot of things here that I liked. Ford and Zoey clearly love each other, Ford has a believable character flaw, and I liked where his character ultimately ended up.
Unfortunately, the biggest problem for me was pretty simple:
Either the betrayal needed to be bigger, or the book needed to be shorter.
Time to spoil this book!
Ford makes one very stupid decision. He and Zoey have been secretly dating for six months because they work together in the ER and Ford is trying for a promotion. When their relationship is discovered and Zoey’s career is threatened, Ford panics and decides for both of them that ending their relationship is the best way to protect her.
It is absolutely the wrong decision.
He should have talked to her. He should have told her what was happening. He should have treated her like his partner and allowed her to have a say in her own life and career.
The problem is… Ford knows that almost immediately.
By the time they arrive on the island for her brother’s wedding, he is already miserable, already knows he screwed up, already wants her back, and repeatedly tries to talk to Zoey and explain what happened.
And she just… won’t let him. 😭
That became increasingly frustrating because while Zoey refuses to have the actual conversation they desperately need to have, she is sending Ford mixed signals ALL OVER THE PLACE.
She doesn’t want to talk to him, but she spends time with him. Sits with him at dinner. Goes with him to the bar. Goes on a hike with him…
She doesn’t trust him, but she lets him be physically intimate with her.
They have sex. They sleep together. They dance together. They leave the wedding holding hands. They play chess and cuddle on the couch like they did when they were together.
Meanwhile, inside Zoey’s head, she is thinking about how this is her final goodbye to their relationship.
MA’AM. HE CANNOT HEAR THE NARRATION. 😂
Ford understandably thinks they’re slowly finding their way back to each other because virtually everything she is doing suggests that they are.
And this is where the book started to feel unnecessarily drawn out. Ford made a stupid, hurtful choice, but he didn’t spend the next hundred pages doubling down on it. He didn’t keep choosing his career over Zoey. He didn’t cheat on her. He wasn’t secretly still in love with his ex. He didn’t abandon her during her pregnancy.
He made a bad decision, realized very quickly that it was a bad decision, and then spent most of the book trying to fix it.
There is also an ongoing issue with his ex, Delilah, that I actually thought gave Ford some needed character growth. Ford grew up in foster care and learned to survive by being accommodating and keeping people happy. As an adult, that means he avoids confrontation even when boundaries desperately need to be drawn.
Unfortunately, that allowed Delilah to believe she still had a chance with him long after their engagement ended.
Zoey calls him out on it perfectly: Delilah’s entitlement has been enabled by Ford’s apathy.
And Ford actually LISTENS.
He draws a firm boundary, tells Delilah they will never be getting back together, rejects her advances, blocks her, and stops allowing fear of her father’s professional influence to control him.
THAT was the Ford I wanted more of.
I also liked his ultimate career decision. He realizes that the promotion he has been chasing is more about prestige than actually wanting the job. When he is finally offered the position, he turns it down, leaves the hospital, and eventually takes a job in Dr. Lance’s private practice—a position that seems much better suited to the kind of medicine he actually enjoys.
So Ford does grow.
That’s why Zoey’s resistance eventually started feeling disproportionate to me.
She seemed to want some kind of guarantee that Ford would never hurt her or make another bad decision again, and that’s just not how love works. Loving somebody is always a risk. Ford will absolutely make another mistake someday. So will Zoey. What matters is whether she trusts that he learned from this mistake and won’t make major decisions affecting both of them without treating her like his partner.
And by the end, I believed he had. Heck by the MIDDLE I believed it.
The ending itself is sweet. Ford and Zoey finally get completely back together, welcome their daughter Stella, and get engaged. I believed their happily ever after.
I just didn’t believe we needed quite so much book to get there.
If the breakup had happened months earlier, if Ford had actually chosen his promotion over Zoey, if the Delilah situation had been more complicated, or if Zoey had truly moved forward with her life before Ford realized his mistake, I could understand needing this much repair.
But as written, it sometimes felt like Zoey just needed to stay mad for a while, so she refused to let Ford have the one conversation that could have resolved most of their conflict.
Ford deserved consequences for making a unilateral decision about their relationship. I just don’t think the punishment quite fit the crime.
Overall, Worth the Risk was sweet and perfectly readable, and I liked Ford more by the end than I expected to. But the conflict wasn’t substantial enough to support how long it was stretched out.
Sometimes a romance needs a bigger betrayal. Sometimes it needs fewer pages.
Book 2 in series “Love On Sirona Isle”. Can be read as a standalone. 2.5 Stars
Good enough pallet cleanser. Quick easy read. I really wasn’t invested enough in the characters or their relationship to care what happened either way, but I’m happy it ended in an HEA for original couple.
Tropes: Secret Relationship; office/ workplace romance; break their heart to save them (their job); brothers best friend; secret pregnancy? (She doesn’t tell him right away because he ends things BUT he does find out pretty quickly, so it’s not secret for long)
Triggers: From Author: Worth the Risk contains an unplanned pregnancy, discussions of childhood abandonment, foster care, and parental neglect, as well as explicit sexual content. The story also includes pregnancy and childbirth anxiety. Please read with care. From Me: Includes (in my opinion) BBS
PLOT: H (Ford) & h (Zoey) have been secretly dating for about 6 months. She’s a nurse and he’s a doctor. He wants to keep their relationship a secret due to a promotion that he wants and Zoey agrees. One day while they’re both sneaking out of a room together, the chief of medicine sees them. He doesn’t want Ford to ruin his chances for advancement & tells him to end it or he’ll transfer Zoey to another department (she loves working the ER). The day she finds out she’s pregnant is the day he breaks things off. A week later they both arrive at Sirona Isle for Zoey’s brother’s wedding (ford is close friends with her brother). From the second he sees her he tries to win her back.
Ford-2.5/5. I really don’t like that he kept Zoey a secret to help further his career. I also didn’t like how he thought he could save her career and make choices about their relationship without discussing it with her.
Zoey- 2/5 who the heck allows a man to keep you his dirty little secret for 6 months? Damn girl: have some self respect. There also (in my opinion) was some BBS. 🤢 that’s one of my major no no’s.
Grovel- 1.5/5 this one is hard. So I’ll explain it like this. It wasn’t conventional on his knees begging her to come back, love bombing kind of grovel. It was more of a change in himself. He didn’t care who saw them together anymore, he didn’t take the hospital position that he desperately wanted in the beginning, he put her first and I did believe that he was sorry and that he knew he messed up big time. Oh and he finally told her why he called off their relationship in the beginning 🙄 but he told her at the very end of the book.
Angst- 0.5/5. There wasn’t any time for angst to settle in. He broke up with her and in the next chapter he was trying to win her back. Also the book already starts with them in a 6 month relationship so the reader never sees it start and develop. There’s one scene with them and that’s all we get before the breakup.
OW/OM Drama? Barely. I think OW is mentioned 2 or 3x. She’s an ex-girlfriend who doesn’t know what the word (ex) means. He doesn’t even entertain her except for the fact that he doesn’t set boundaries either. He’s one of those MCs that try and “keep the peace” and it doesn’t help that her daddy is on the board of directors, so he always tries and plays nice.
Spice- 🌶️🌶️ descriptive scenes with h
Pacing; Grammar; Spelling- Pacing was good. It’s 159 pages which includes epilogue. He breaks up with her around the 25% mark and the rest is him trying to win her back. It flowed enough that I finished it in one sitting and I didn’t skim at all. I noticed one or 2 grammar mistakes but spelling seemed on point.
Believable HEA? And Final Thoughts- Yes. Like I said, he was an idiot: all of this drama could’ve been avoided if he would’ve had an honest conversation with Zoey instead of thinking he can fix/save everything on his own. I’m not sure if I’ll read more by this author, but I’m not opposed to it either. Next time I need a so what, who cares read to re-set myself from the darker more angsty books I like to read I might turn to the first book in the series and see if I like that one any better.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Love betrayal and grovel stories! These are a nice change as the betrayals aren’t ones that you can’t come back from. They are tough but the guys earn it. Really enjoying this authors work so far!
Ford and Zoey are seeing each other in secret because he’s afraid if people at the hospital knew it would hurt his chances for a promotion. There’s a bit of OWD from his ex. It’s not because he has any feelings for her but because her father is on the committee that’s will decide his promotion. So, he tries just not encouraging his ex but also not really spelling out to her that things between them are really over between them. This definitely hurts Zoey’s feelings. After their breakup Ford realizes he misses Zoey more than he cares about the new position. There is some groveling but it’s more them talking and Zoey really believing him when he says she more important.
I enjoyed the first book in this series - nice story, quickly wrapped up but with enough depth to satisfy - and this one continues the success. Very likeable characters, MMC realized he was wrong quickly and was all in on getting his gal. I don’t generally like a pregnancy trope but it worked well here. It seemed there would be some act 3 angst around FMC feeling MMC might be like her father… but that fizzled out quickly. I think the ending could have been a bit more developed in this sense, but overall great read. Looking forward to the next installment, there were plenty of other guests at that wedding who have secrets!
these two are suppose to be healthcare professionals?
Entrusted with fictional people’s lives and yet, one is a doctor who makes rash decisions based on heightened emotions and the other is a nurse who played it fast and loose with a 94-96% effective depo shot.
A doctor who can’t set boundaries with an ex and a nurse who took back the man who dumped and knocked her up in under a fortnight. What a pair.
I had been looking forward to their story ever since I read book 1. After doing what he did, needed to grovel more though and I wish he hadn’t found out about the baby so soon, I wanted to see how he acted while they were back at work before he knew. All in all, it was a good story with very interesting characters.
The first book, despite its flaws, was much better than this one. I just didn’t feel connected to the story or the characters. Am the hero was a wimp and the heroine did t really give me the feeling of her angst. All in all, mediocre 2.5 stars
Not sure why we bothered with anything beyond chapter 12. She had already forgiven him before he could even apologize. Couldn't be rolling by eyes any harder. Would love for any of these female characters to grow a spine.
This was a fun little novella. Ford and Zoey have undeniable chemistry and it was a delight to watch this self assured doctor fumbling to right his wrongs. I loved the premise of this story but wish it was a hare longer to give a more emotional impact. A fun time nonetheless.
Loved this story! So sad at first but Ford realized he had to sacrifice for Zoey and his daughter. Beautiful HEA of course after some nice groveling. My favorite