Stacey Lynn

Wow! What an emotional journey Stacey Lynn takes you on in this one! Chelsea witnesses a horrible accident where one of her middle school students, Derrick, doesn't make it. Aiden has been interested in Chelsea since he first met her but the time never seemed right. Now, she's the one that was there when he lost his only son & he turns to her. Chelsea has also had tragedy in her life from the breakdown of her marriage to her infertility. Derrick's best friend, Shane was with him when the show more accident happened & he turns to his teacher, Chelsea to try to help him make sense of his guilt & sorrow. Can Auden & Chelsea's relationship survive once he accepts his loss? Can Shane come to terms with his guilt?

Stacey Lynn has written an emotional heart wrenching story about grief, sorrow, loss & love. She has done an amazing job pulling the reader into the journey from the time of the accident to the very end. The narrative was so descriptive, I felt the emotions the characters felt. The plot lead us through the stages of grief - the never ending sorrow, the anger, the guilt, the acceptance & the love! The supporting characters are well developed & contribute a sense of love & easy acceptance to the scenes. They also managed to show how devastating the grief can be to the entire circle & the fear when they see a friend self destructing & they can do nothing to stop it. This is not a dark, sober story but one of light, life, love & giving. Make sure you have a box of tissues beside you when you read this & have time to read it all in one sitting! I cried, smiled & laughed while reading it & there was no way I was putting it down until the end! I loved it & will be going to look at the first two books of this series. They can easily be read as stand alone books if they pull this kind of an emotional response & without a feeling of being lost in the characters & the plot.

I received an ARC via NetGalley in exchange for an honest opinion. show less

“You might still be pissed when I tell you it was the night before you came into MadInk, but if I’m going to be completely honest, for the last two months, every time I was with a woman, I was honestly just trying to fuck the memory of you out of my head.”
^I wrote that part when I was still reading the book and I still agree to it. I mean, come on! It had only been 2 months since he had been with Cara and he slept with a bunch of other women. Am I supposed to be ok with that? He show more didn't even try to make contact with Cara before he stuck it into some other woman. And one of them also happens to work in the same circle as Cara. Why do authors think that's ok? Where is the romance? Did we really need a scene where we learn that Braxton didn't even try to stay celibate for 2 months? I was loving him until that point. After that, I can only feel sorry for Cara for getting stuck with him for the rest of her life. And to be honest, if she had broken things off with him and moved on with another man, I would have been happier and that almost never happens. I am very disappointed with this book and the author. She has given us so many good books and now we get this? Braxton is easily one of the worst heroes because he seemed so nice and caring for most of the book and then he goes and says this. Just say that you wanted to get laid dude. You didn't even ask your friend for Cara's number, yet you went wherever you went and found a dozen random women in order to forget her. That makes so much sense. That's not romance. This is the second most cliche line someone could say to justify their need to sleep with other people. The first is that they had a broken heart and the one night stands help them get over it. And the worse thing is that Cara just accepted that and even had sex with him after mentioning again a few minutes before the act that he had slept with other women. How does that help the romance? It doesn't in my book and that's why I am giving 1 star to a book that was going to get 5 before that paragraph came into my life.

Merged review:

“You might still be pissed when I tell you it was the night before you came into MadInk, but if I’m going to be completely honest, for the last two months, every time I was with a woman, I was honestly just trying to fuck the memory of you out of my head.”
^I wrote that part when I was still reading the book and I still agree to it. I mean, come on! It had only been 2 months since he had been with Cara and he slept with a bunch of other women. Am I supposed to be ok with that? He didn't even try to make contact with Cara before he stuck it into some other woman. And one of them also happens to work in the same circle as Cara. Why do authors think that's ok? Where is the romance? Did we really need a scene where we learn that Braxton didn't even try to stay celibate for 2 months? I was loving him until that point. After that, I can only feel sorry for Cara for getting stuck with him for the rest of her life. And to be honest, if she had broken things off with him and moved on with another man, I would have been happier and that almost never happens. I am very disappointed with this book and the author. She has given us so many good books and now we get this? Braxton is easily one of the worst heroes because he seemed so nice and caring for most of the book and then he goes and says this. Just say that you wanted to get laid dude. You didn't even ask your friend for Cara's number, yet you went wherever you went and found a dozen random women in order to forget her. That makes so much sense. That's not romance. This is the second most cliche line someone could say to justify their need to sleep with other people. The first is that they had a broken heart and the one night stands help them get over it. And the worse thing is that Cara just accepted that and even had sex with him after mentioning again a few minutes before the act that he had slept with other women. How does that help the romance? It doesn't in my book and that's why I am giving 1 star to a book that was going to get 5 before that paragraph came into my life. show less

I wavered between 3 and 4 stars, but not because I couldn't get into the book, but because of Jillian. I loved her and Klaus together, and I thought they had great chemistry. He was a great friend and I thought he was doing a good job of showing Jillian how he felt about her. I loved this book until the last 20%. Then Jillian tells her friend that her and Klaus are "just friends", but then gets upset because Klaus repeats the same thing??!! After all her pouting, Klaus finally comes straight show more out and tells her that he wants to be with her, and she tells him she just wants to be friends? She literally cried for 2 weeks because he hurt her feelings and then changes her mind?! I wanted to reach through my kindle and smack her so bad! She finally gets her head out of her a** and decides to let him know how she really felt about him. That part was actually sweet, and she won back some points in my opinion. The ending was great, and I loved getting that glimpse into their future and seeing all the players be there for each other.
I voluntarily reviewed an advanced readers copy of this book. show less

This was a pretty good read for the most part. I thought the writing flowed well, and Connor and Brenna have great chemistry. It's hinted from the start that Brenna has some issues, but the reader is clued in pretty quickly that these aren't "normal" issues. This is the thing that gets me. I've never endured the things this character has, but I do know that if I had, and continued to have such strong reactions to people and places, I would be in therapy. Brenna says she had it before, but show more when running into someone (literally) in a hallway of your work place makes everyone freak out, that's a problem. The scene that starts the drama was crazy too. Again, she needed therapy. She was also a runner. That's annoying for me. I thought Connor was a jerk at first, but it didn't take long for him to turn around. He was a good guy who continued to fight for Brenna and show her that he was there for her. I liked that Brenna was able to let go a little and for them to get their HEA.
I voluntarily reviewed an advanced readers copy of this book. show less