When Ben Wilder is given a second chance he focuses on the one thing he’s always been good at: running. After walking on to the University of Florida Track and Field team he begins to quickly move up the national rankings, paving a path towards the NCAA Championships. Everything is going the way he planned, until the day he bumps into Casey Taylor.
New to Gainesville, and focused on her first year out of medical school, Casey is initially hesitant to let Ben into her life. But the truth is she’s worried about letting a guy near the one thing she loves most: her daughter, Emma. After one fun and fateful night Casey can no longer bury her feelings behind these excuses, and takes a chance on a guy she is slowly falling for.
Casey’s relationship with Ben starts to gradually build into a love that she has never felt before. But more importantly, Emma has taken a particular liking to Ben. As they all spend more time together Ben is forced to confront painful memories when he starts to notice something hauntingly familiar in Emma’s eyes.
After a local journalist uncovers the secret of Ben’s past their lives begin to converge on a single promise that Ben Wilder has long since made: to never give up…no matter what.
I read this book as yet another buddy read with Cátia @The Girl Who Read Too Much. You should just assume that most of this month and the next, I’ll be doing buddy reads with her – damn Netgalley! 😀 You can find her review of this book HERE.
You know when you read a blurb, and get all excited, expecting a great story, a lot of heartbreak, and twists that will make your heart bleed? Yeah, I thought this would be that kind of book, and I was so disappointed 😦 .
Let me start with the writing… I really didn’t like it, it felt choppy. To make matters worse, this book is on the third person, which is fine, until near the end you realize that it’s an omnicious 3rd person narrator… and was not a fan of that. I didn’t get if it was like that throughout the whole book and I didn’t catch it, or if it changed for some reason near the end… either way, it didn’t work for me at all.
I felt like the characters had huge potential, and I liked them for most part, but I needed more from them. There were a lot of small things brought up that had no continuity or relevance, and other things that should have been mentioned and weren’t – *cof – where’s Emma’s dad – cof*.
The plot was cute for a good bit, with Ben and Casey getting to know each other and beginning a relationship, and then it went to cliché and predictable and literal, and not the good kind of either of those things.
I had a huge problem with the timeline within the book, as well as the fact that neither character really acted their age. I mean, how old is Parker? He’s not a freshman, but is he 19? How old is Casey’s BFF? They went together to highschool, right? So 25? So weird! And Emma… oh boy… I’m sorry, but the girl felt more like a filler and a good excuse for Casey than anything else. I didn’t really feel her connection with her mom or Ben, and by the end I wasn’t entirely sure if Ben really loved her, or if she was a substitute for what he had lost…
Either way, this book by all standards was OK, but it just wasn’t for me. 😦
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