This was ok. The beginning was interesting and I was curious to see how everything was going to reveal itself. I mean, the town thought she was dead but she didn’t know the town thought she was dead. Hmmm 🤔🤔🤔 intrigued.
By chapter 5 people realized she wasn’t dead and by chapter 6 her high school boyfriend was dumping his fiancé and pledging his everlasting love to our heroine. From there I felt like everything that could be thrown into a book was. Multiple couples in love, multiple spouses who have lost loved ones, retirements, career ending injuries, affairs, abuse, abandonment, adoption, long-lost siblings, fake baby, Alzheimer’s, dying parent...I’m sure I’m missing about a dozen other things. It was overwhelming.
The other thing that was overwhelming was the number of characters. It was mind numbing trying to keep track of everyone and who belonged together or were interested in each other. My mind was spinning, and not in a good way.
Also, the steam factor is zero. They kiss one time at 43%, but it’s not steamy and there is no other sexual physical contact between the H/h. So if you like that in your books, this won’t have any of that.
There are several references to “God’s plan” but I didn’t feel like it was an overly religious book. I just noticed that God and angels were referenced.
Unfortunately the desperation of the jilted fiancé and the whole last 10% of the book was eye-rolling. It didn’t ring true, didn’t add to the story and I felt broke the flow of the story in a negative way. It definitely wasn’t needed.
I was looking forward to a really interesting plot of why her friends had been told the heroine was dead, but instead I got a ton of different plots that just made the book feel muddy.
I didn’t read the first book and it’s not necessary to do so in order to understand this one, so it is a standalone. However, if this is a sample of what is in other books, I’ll pass on reading anything else.