A review by opheliabedilia
Dream a Little Dream by Susan Elizabeth Phillips

2.0

There were things I quite liked about this at the beginning. I liked Rachel's grit in the face of truly terrible circumstances. I liked how, at the beginning, she would do anything she could to protect her child. But Gabe was insufferable from beginning to end. Yes, he was mired in an awful grief. I get that. But he took his grief over his deceased five year old out on a living five year old. And once Rachel got in a relationship with him, she failed to protect her son from that. At that point I lost sympathy for both of them. And the turnabout at the end was too fast, too unbelievable, and came with not nearly enough apologizing. Although frankly there's no amount of apologizing that could get me to forgive a man who

Spoiler

hit my child

.

Also, his brothers were terrible. One was less terrible than the other, but that's not saying much. Supposedly they were all a big happy family and the brothers were just protective, but they expressed that protectiveness by being awful to a woman in horrible circumstances and refusing to look beyond what they thought they knew of her. The one redeeming trait they both had was that they, at least, were kind to the little boy. Apparently one of them has his own book, but I have no desire to read about him, especially given that his book came before this one in the series, meaning he will have already had whatever redemption arc he is ever going to have, and still turned out like this. Not one of these three brothers comes anywhere near deserving the women they end up having. It's annoying.