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3.43 AVERAGE
3.43 AVERAGE
I love forbidden and age gap romances but this one wasn't for me. I liked the heroine, Adele, a lot more in the flashback/then scenes. In the flashbacks we get to see how her dad is never around and she spends all her summers with Peter, her dads friend and colleague. I found the Hero stiff and a bit of a jerk. Peter hardly interacts with Adele now that she's back except to give her glares. There's a scene where Adele asks Pete to tell her if taking a job with him would be a problem which I thought was mature. But then Pete says "I think if you come back and take this job, you'll be bored in no time, and take off leaving a fucking mess again." He also tells her that he doesn't trust her and implies there is nothing she can do to get it back. Later he brings a date to her dads wedding and his date asks Adele for some intel because Pete never opens up. Adele is rightfully upset at being put in the middle and tells Pete who then dumps his date at the wedding. Adele feels guilty for some reason and drives her back home?
Them getting together was out of left field to me. I was rooting for her to just leave and not come back. I never felt any chemistry between them in the now scenes since he seemed like he couldn't get away from her fast enough. This book would have benefited so much with having his POV because we don't know what changes for him. I want to know how he felt when she flashed him at 18 and got him beat up and fired. I want to know how her dad and Pete repaired their relationship. It's revealed that his coworkers know what happened so did he ever get teased about it? His side of the story sounds so much more interesting.
I liked these characters, and the story line was good.
It all goes to hell when Adele’s father throws her a belated 18th birthday party and Adele, bolstered by alcohol, decides to make a play for Pete. She corners him, kisses him and flashes him. Her dad walks in, misreads the situation and hits Pete. Adele goes home and doesn’t return until her Dad’s wedding to Shanti, seven years later.
Adele is staying in Pete’s spare room and they are co-existing with Pete calling her ‘kid’ which comes across as a reminder to himself to stay away. Adele doesn’t shy away from calling him out on his bull and owning her past mistakes and challenging him on his.
Things change the night of Adele’s fathers wedding when Pete breaks up with the girl he was dating and drunkenly seduces Adele, much to her delight and his chagrin. Thinking he regrets their night together, Adele makes plans to go home until Pete cajoles her into staying. They are having a great time in and out of bed until her Dad walks in on them in the kitchen, not eating dinner.
Pete doesn’t handle it well. He apologises to her father and Adele sees red. After saying her peace to him and falling out of the tree she has been climbing in and out of since she was a teenager, Adele goes home.
Flash to a few weeks later and her roommates convince her to take a pregnancy test, just as Pete shows up with her car, left at her fathers because she couldn’t drive injured. They discover she is pregnant, and he talks her in to going back home with him. Pete finally stands up to his father after they return, he seems to have an epiphany and he admits he loves her and proposes.
The pregnancy was predictable. It was mentioned more than once that they didn’t use protection because Adele was on birth control and they were both clean. With Pete’s ex hanging around and wanting to talk to him I thought she was pregnant. It would have made an interesting twist if she had been.
Scott writes well, her dialogue and character relationships seem effortless. She knows how, and when to use humour effectively. I am often impressed by her work.
Adele’s relationship with her Dad is realistic and typical, Shanti is a fantastic character who doesn’t shy away from anything and says what she thinks with panache. Maddy and Hazel, Adele’s roommates are a couple and great friends to Adele. Scott’s work is often LGBTQIA+ inclusive, which I love.
This was a great stand alone book and I look forward to more from this Aussie author.
My one downfall is it ended too soon, I feel like we could have gotten another 3 good chapters of what it is like for them in the now, and even the epilogue was only like a few months. So for me, that was sad. I wanted something more.
I enjoyed the age gap, I think it worked for this book I very much enjoyed the friendship in this book that is what I liked best.
I really don’t have anything profound to say, it was a good story and I already explained what I wanted more. So on to narration.
I am a fan of Kylie but I do wish she would find more narrators, I like Andi’s work don’t get me wrong but when she is the only one narrating all Kylie’s books they can start to all sound the same even when the story is different. I know this is probably an unpopular opinion but that’s ok.
Anyway I stayed up last night and then finished this morning. Looking forward to more books by Kylie!
I enjoyed this book but also felt frustrated by the main characters.