RATING: ⭐⭐⭐⭐.5
SPICE: 🔥🔥🔥
This read was a lot heavier than I anticipated, and I would not have put it down if I didn't have to chase down a second box of tissues.
Despite coming from opposite upbringings, Oliver and January were immediately drawn to each other as kids. To Oliver, January was a bright light in his opulent but dark life. Their childhood connection ended when Oliver was shipped off to go to school overseas.
Years passed, and Oliver is back. This time, it is January that needs rescuing from her financial troubles. He offers her a place in his beach house, and the proximity is stirring up memories and feelings that were long suppressed by time and distance. The easy connection they once built as kids is not so easily resurrected as Oliver and January's emotional baggage serves as large obstacles on their path to HEA.
If this read sets the tone for this Riviera View spin-off, we are in for a fantastic emotional roller coaster ride. While the original series had a lighter tone to it, Riviera Shores brings the angst and heartache. Oliver and January's road to HEA was certainly not easy, but their chemistry carried me through the read.
This can be read as a standalone, but if you are a Lily Baines fan, you will appreciate the cameo appearances by characters from her Riviera View series.
I need a quick minute to recover, but boy, am I ready to be wrecked for the rest of the series.
** I am voluntarily reviewing an advance copy of this book. Thank you to Lily Baines for providing an ARC. **
ABOUT THE BOOK
Two childhood soulmates, two opposite sides of the tracks, one beach house.
Oliver Madden doesn’t do relationships. Which I’d do well to remember because, at 38, he’s the same maddening heartthrob he was in high school.
I’ve known him since we were six. My mother cleaned the house Oliver grew up in. A lonely kid in a big villa with no love. From the moment we met, we became each other’s shore to crash on, until time and life came between us.
When the broken boy I once loved learns I’m drowning in debt and offers I move into his beach house, I can’t afford to say no. I just need to ensure I don’t fall for the man he is now. A green-eyed man with barbed wire around his heart.
His barricaded heart claims he offered his house because he owes me. But every kind act, every lingering look, every burning touch, tells me that this rugged man is a gun loaded with pain, rage, and love.
And he doesn’t want to risk my finger on the trigger.
Shores of Your Heart is a dual pov, forced proximity, slow burn, second chance, childhood friends to lovers romance with an angsty-yet-worth-taking road to a HEA.
