This review actually hurts my heart to give, like honestly...I have been a huge Bliss fan for years and hate to leave such a gifted, talented author a low review. I have been trying to decide what to say and basically, it boils down to a great idea that needed more pages added to the book in order to tell it believably. With more time/pages a natural healthy relationship could have formed between Alice and Morris and a believable approach to dealing with her husband could have been built and executed. As it stands, within the first 50% (a matter of hours have passed in the book world) Alice has not only left her abusive husband, with her 6-year-old daughter but she's taken to the roads in a junker with a plan that only got her 5-6 hrs from her abusive husband and then it's just free for all from that point. On top of that, she is having to control her urges to be intimate with a man she's just met, knowing her abusive husband is literally sitting outside the house she's hiding in? What actual woman/mother, who was abused for 2 years, is even thinking about sex with some stranger, while their child's life is in danger? How do you mentally go from, my freaking husband, who I ran away from 4 hrs ago, is outside and texting to...uh I like his shoulders and I'm getting wet...NO ONE! What man helps a woman and her daughter who are obviously scared, bruised, and running from a man, and within hours of meeting her is already rubbing on her, kissing her, and calling her baby? That's just too weird and either means the husband was never truly a threat to Alice and Zoey, so what was the purpose of leaving the way she did, OR Alice and Morris have zero problem-solving skills and might need mental health help. And this is only 50% of the way in...I can suspend belief about a lot of things, but a mother who is spending any time thinking about a new man while she is on the run with her kid...I just can't even respect her a little...so I stopped caring or believing in Alice, and Morris by default because he didn't stop all that crap in its tracks and treat her like a woman on the run who needed help and not complications. There are books that ask you to "suspend some belief because it's romantic" and then there are books that are just blindingly unrealistic and you can't stay in the book world because it's that far out there, this one, for me, is the last.
I will obviously keep reading Bliss because I have loved all her other books, but this was just a no for me...