Dilly Thompkins is a liar. She’s been lying to everyone, even her closest friends, for more than a decade. She lies to keep a secret, a secret not entirely her own, a secret that will change the way everyone in her small hometown of Catalpa Creek looks at her and treats her. Her lies and her secret have made it important that she never lets anyone get too close, not just because she needs to keep … keep her secret, but because loving someone, getting lost in another person, is dangerous for someone like Dilly.
Oscar is Dilly’s new neighbor and he’s determined to find out why this woman, a woman he’s been drawn to since their first meeting, looks so sad so often. He’ll do just about anything to make her smile, but the more he gets to know her, the more he cares about her, the more he knows he stands to lose. He moved to Catalpa Creek for a simpler life, and Dilly’s secret may be more complication than he wants.
As the people who care about Dilly begin to question her carefully laid lies, she shoves her own walls up higher and goes on the defensive. Her world is crumbling and the only place she feels safe anymore is in Oscar’s arms.
This is the third book in the Catalpa Creek Series, but it can be read as a stand-alone (less)
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I spent a few days away from home and had time to finally tackle my TBR. After sifting through first chapters of five other books and not sticking with them, I landed on this one. I’d read a few of Katharine’s other books and knew that I could bite my teeth into this one, enjoy the writing and the story, and continue my love of the characters from this Catalpa Creek series. I love that the issues of Mental Health were dealt with in this one. Very on point with today’s society making Mental Health a priority. Oscar was amazing, a five-star book boyfriend. I’m glad he stuck by Dilly and didn’t give up.
I read the first book in this series, The Deadbeat Next Door, a long time ago, and one of things I liked most about it was the heroine’s best friend, Dilly. She was fun and smart and had a don’t-take-crap-from-anyone attitude that I really enjoyed. We see a much different Dilly in The Good Guy on My Porch, but she’s still an interesting, complex heroine, and overall, this story makes for good 1-clicking.
Here’s what worked for me:
1. This is a slow-burn romance. Y’all know I LOVE me a good slow-burn romance.
2. This is also a true friends-to-lovers romance. Oscar and Dilly really get to know each other before starting anything romantic. No instalove here, that’s for sure.
3. There’s a fairly serious element to the story that deals with mental illness and the impact it can have on both the afflicted and the family of the afflicted. It felt very genuine to me, as if the subject was near and dear to the author’s heart. The authenticity of it made me feel even more sympathetic to Dilly as a character.
4. Oscar is a 100% nice guy. There’s never a point in the story that he’s anything but the perfect nice guy. And y’all know I LOVE me a nice-guy romance hero.
5. There’s a rescue dog. Any story can be improved by at least a full star rating if a rescue dog is added. (No need to fact-check that. Just take my word for it.)
6. All the boring mechanical stuff is good: good dialogue that doesn’t feel forced, very few typos, decent pacing.
So, with all those positives, why not a perfect rating, you ask? Well…There were times that I really wanted to reach through my Kindle and smack the crap out of Dilly. I just wanted to shake her until she told Oscar the truth. I mean, he never showed ANY indication that he’d be anything less than supportive and helpful, and the fact that she missed multiple opportunities to come clean with him really irked me after a while. But, even with that said, I understood why she was reluctant to say anything to anyone, and after you’ve maintained a lie as long as Dilly had, coming clean probably just wouldn’t feel natural, so I cut her some slack.
Minor gripe notwithstanding, The Good Guy on My Porch is a solid slow-burn, friends-to-lovers romance that tackles the topic of mental illness in a delicate-yet-realistic way. Overall, it’s a highly 1-clickable read.
And feel free to check out the Romance Rehab blog for more rants, raves, and other fun romance-y stuff: http://www.romancerehab.com/