Labels

BOOKWORM REVIEW: You Weren't Mine Then by Lily Baines


RATING: ⭐⭐⭐⭐.5
STEAM: 🔥🔥.5

How do you reconcile with the one person you've loved the most who also broke your heart?

Anne Drecher faces this dilemma when she comes back to her hometown to help her parents with their bakery. Coming home also meant dealing with the problems she had tried to leave behind, including facing Finn.

Finn Brennen is just trying to be a good dad and live his life now that he and his ex-wife finally parted ways. After finding out that Anne is back, he tries to reconnect but is immediately rebuffed. How could you forgive someone who ended up marrying their nemesis?

There was a lot to unpack as I was reading this book. Anne and Finn's history is definitely intertwined, but it is also so tangled. Now they are within reach, but how can they untangle the web that is their relationship?

Lily Baines tugs at your heartstrings with this slow-burn story. She does a great job of telling the story, toggling back and forth in time, to establish a deep connection between the two main characters. There is definitely a lot of angst, especially in the beginning, but they make you feel for Anne and Finn. I especially love the nuanced differences in the characters' personalities in the past and in the present. Baines infuses a higher level of maturity in the two when we see them interact with each other and other characters in present-day that is scaled back in the flashbacks.

This is the third book of Baines' Riviera View series, but it can definitely be read as a standalone. For those who are fans of the previous books, there are also nice cameos from the characters in those books.

** I am voluntarily reviewing an advance copy of this book. Thank you to Lily Baines for providing an ARC. **

ABOUT THE BOOK 

Family is forever, but what if love is, too? When the love of your life becomes off-limits, is a second chance even possible?

Finn Brennen, swim team star, and Anne Drecher, the wallflower who tutored him, sparked an unlikely friendship that turned into a love so breathtakingly deep that they couldn’t imagine life without the other.

But their happiness was short-lived. Torn apart by horrible timing and a twist of fate, for over a decade they are forced to hide their mutual past.

Devastated by a love neither could forget, Anne built a life away from it all while Finn strove to give his son a stable home. But every family gathering brought them into the same room and served as a torturous reminder of what-ifs and could-have-beens.

Now Finn is divorced and ready to fight for what his heart wants and needs. Anne tries to resist but yearns for the love she thought she’d lost forever.

Once they had it all. Now they want it back. Is a second chance even possible when their love could tear a tightly-knit family apart?

‘You Weren’t Mine Then’ is a steamy slow-burn small-town romance with NO cheating. It can be read as a standalone and is the third in the Riviera View series, a collection of interconnected novels.

Get Your Copy (Free with Kindle Unlimited) → https://amzn.to/3QnpG7m

 

MEET LILY BAINES

Lily Baines is a mother, wife, and author (not always in this order). For 20 years she worked in Human Resources but kept writing to maintain her sanity and flow of creative juices. For the last 3 years Lily is dedicating her time to her 3 children, husband, family dog, bottomless laundry basket, full kitchen sink, and her writing. Her first book was published in 2020. This is her 6th book.

Connect with Lily
Website: https://www.lilybaines.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lilybainesauthor
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lily_baines_author
Twitter: https://twitter.com/lilybaines10
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/20181609.Lily_Baines
Bookbub: https://www.bookbub.com/profile/lily-baines
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Lily-Baines/e/B086H3L8H8

Tags: