We are back in charming small-town Vermont with another dazzling romance from an author who never fails to impress or reaffirm my love of her every written word. Sarina Bowen takes us back to her True North world with a tale of first love, belonging, second chances, and forgiveness. This is one of those novels that’s the whole package in every possible way—it’s sexy, it’s nostalgic, it’s moving, it’s romantic, but most importantly, it finally gives us Benito Rossi’s story.
It doesn’t matter that I won’t run into him. I’m still holding a grudge against him and the whole state where I fell for him.
Skylar ‘Skye’ Copeland hasn’t seen the Green Mountains of Vermont for twelve long years, ever since she ran away from her trailer park home in the dead of night with nothing more than a duffel bag and a broken young heart in tow. A decade later and now living in New York City, Skye is no longer the same quiet teenager who used to wear thrift-store clothes to school and fear daily for her own safety, but a mysterious call from her stepsister pulls her back to the very place she promised herself she would never return to, and in the path of the only man who broke her heart.
Six-foot-three inches of my high school heartbreak is staring intently at me. All my blood stops circulating. There stands the man who basically ripped the beating organ right out of my chest and stomped it with a motorcycle boot.
Benito Rossi has never forgotten the first girl he ever loved, nor has he stopped wondering why she walked away from him all those years ago. As we catch little glimpses of Skye and Benito as teenagers, we watch two trailer-park kids become friends and then fall in love for the very first time, but when they meet again a decade later, their feelings for one another are muddled by years-old pain and regret. Once burned by her own feelings for a boy who she believed didn’t feel the same, Skye is apprehensive of their reunion, but from the moment Benito lays eyes on Skye again, he sees this as their chance to finally become what they were always meant to be—each other’s everything. Even if it means using all his ‘means of persuasion’ to win her over once and for all.
“I want the chance to prove you wrong. One chance. One night.”
“One night. For…”
“Fireworks. With me.”
As Skye and Benito slowly begin to rebuild their relationship and the fragile trust between them, an old foe comes back into the picture, forcing them to face their past and threatening to take away their future. And defeating their past could prove to be a lot more dangerous than they ever expected.
My whole life is defined by things that happened in this place, whether I want it to be or not.
With fine plotting, superb characterisation, a constant thread of suspense, and a charming small-town setting, Sarina Bowen delivers another swoony, must-read romance that should be on everyone’s bookshelf.
I wonder how long it will take me to stop wondering if each time I see her might be my last.
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True North - Recommended Reading Order
(standalone stories with interconnected characters)
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