Contemporary Romance intended for mature audiences. This novel can be read as a standalone or as part of the Living Heartwood series.Pressing the boundaries of both the psyche and the heart, Sam and Holden embark on a dangerous journey that will test the limits of love.Sam Wintry’s life used to be almost perfect. She was engaged to her childhood best friend and high school sweetheart, Tyler … high school sweetheart, Tyler Marks, planning an amazing cross-country honeymoon during her college break. But after a hit-and-run leaves her in ruin, she begins seeing Tyler’s fractured, ghostly presence, and her family believes she’s losing her mind. Not until she completes their journey, stopping along the way to scatter Tyler’s remains, will Tyler be able cross over. Only…is Sam ready for him to leave her?
When the black sheep of the Marks’ family, Holden Marks, returns to check on Tyler’s case, Sam convinces him to give her his brother’s ashes. Despite their shaky history, she needs him…plus, he owes it to Sam and his brother. What she doesn’t count on is Holden’s relentlessness to go on the trip.
On the road, Holden realizes just how unhinged Sam has become. Dealing with her psychosis forces him to confront his dark past, making it harder to keep secrets hidden that should remain buried. Especially from Sam, the only woman he’s ever loved. And as Sam starts to unravel the truth, she begins to question if the brother she’s unwillingly falling for again is in an even darker place than her.
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Just be prepared this one deals with a sad situation. I love Sam and Holden as a couple even though it took awhile to get there, due to certain circumstances. I look forward to the next in this standalone series.
The death of Sam’s best friend turned fiancee sends her spiraling into a mental fog and a belief that he is still with her as a ghost. Only Holden, her first love and first heartache (also the best friend’s brother) seems to be able to reach through the reality that she’s created to deal with her pain. Wolf has a way of bringing the most painfully brutal stories into something beautiful. I enjoyed this as I have her “With Ties that Bind” and “With Visions of Red” books. They are dark, choosing to explore emotional pain and longing with understanding and compassion. Her characters’ flaws make them interesting and dynamic. Well worth the read.
I am going to be upfront in my review and not try and play it off that this has a paranormal aspects to it. The heroine in this suffers from psychosis – she thinks she sees her dead boyfriend and that she needs to help him cross over. Of course what really needs to happen is she needs to face what happened and let him go.
There are three main players in this book. Holden and Tyler Marks who are brothers and Sam Wintry, who they have known and lived next to since she was born. They grew up very close. Sam and Holden were the shyer artsy types where Tyler was the athlete and planned to follow in his father footsteps to become a lawyer. Sam had always had a crush on Holden but for circumstances Sam knew nothing about he pushed her away when she finally got the courage to tell him. From that point on her and Tyler cross the friendship line into a relationship and were planning on getting married before he was killed by a hit and run driver. Sam not able to handle his death had a mental breakdown but in her eyes it was everyone else that didn’t understand that Tyler was still there.
We knew one of Holden’s reason from walking away from Sam was he knew he brother was in love with her and his whole life he done nothing but try and protect his brother from first his father’s fist then another tragic accident. He knows Sam hates him but it breaks his heart to see her so broken now. When he sees that she is going to go on the cross-country trip that she and Tyler had always planned on her own he puts his issues aside to go with her to keep her safe.
What neither of these two expected to happen on this trip is for their wounds to be ripped open which in turn finally causes the long needed healing of both of them to begin and for them both to realize that something that started a very long time ago was always meant to be.
Along with the present this book has a lot of flashbacks which are needed to really explain how everyone ended up where they are today. In doing that it felt like Tyler was a big part of the book even though he was dead when the book started. These three people suffered so much in their short lives. I really enjoyed this book and plan to read the rest in the series.
Couldn’t get into this book
Overall I really enjoyed this book. The blurb made me wonder if it was my sort of thing but it wasn’t as ‘ghostly’ as I had expected.
Beautifully written and from a dual POV and full of emotion, Trisha Wolfe is a very good author. Whilst the epilogue tied things up nicely, I felt that the last few chapters were a little rushed and the book would have been even better (it already is a very good read) if some more meat had been added. The issues from the start of the book seemed a little rushed in the last few chapters, and not as nicely detailed as some of the other scenes were in the book (I hate spoilers – hence the vagueness of this last statement!). It was as if the author decided that the book would be xxx pages long, got within 20 pages and decided to finish the story, rather than extend the length of the book.
Good enough that I will be buying the other two titles in this series.