Married for just three months, Alex Barrett is stunned when her husband, David, dies in a tragic accident. And the absolute last thing the pregnant young widow wants is to take on responsibility for his teenage daughter, Maddie. Reeling from loss, Alex struggles to deal with her grief and her troubled stepdaughter, but one question haunts her: why was David with his ex-wife when he died?
All … died?
All Maddie Barrett wanted was for her parents to get back together, but an icy road took that dream away. Afterward, Maddie is riddled with guilt that she can’t share with anyone. Feeling angry and alone, she lays all the blame on Alex.
Alex and Maddie must find a way to move past their pain—shared, yet separate. Thrown together in an untenable arrangement, they fight through a frozen landscape of sorrow and redemption while redefining love, forgiveness, and family.
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Excellent, excellent book, storyline, and ending. Very well satisfied.
It took awhile to get into the book, but the reading style kept you going. So glad I kept trucking through it…it was very good book that I wish had a sequel to close up some of the other main characters.
I like this book. I can’t imagine being a widowed pregnant woman and being saddled with her husbands teenage daughter, that could be a fate worse than death even when the child is your own, but, when she hates you and you are the evil step-mother what could be worse? Good family dynamic and how it all gets resolved is great.
Great book
Very realistic. . .handling a teenager in the best of time is difficult. Being an insecure step makes things even worse. Good moral–always talk about things that are bothering you then there are no misunderstandings.
A beautiful read with modern and believable characters. The story drew me in as each chapter unfolded. I love books that switch between protagonists and follow a time frame from the past to the present. The novel was so engrossing, I finished it in two evenings. Highly recommended!!
It was a good book but it would have been better if they had left out the bad language. Also they could have taken out the drugs and under aged sex.
Most enjoyable. Not your run-of-the-mill story.
Not bad, but could have tied things together better.
Easy reading. Interesting and entertaining circumstances.
I really liked the way the author wrote but I didn’t care for the speed in which the characters jumped into bed. That was disappointing to me and at one point I debated whether to finish reading it.
Loved it.
Worked through a difficult time. Maddie came out on top.
Will review later.
Really enjoyed this one. Couldn’t put it down, had to get to the end!
I liked it well enough to read the next two books in the series
I liked this book, and the writing was pretty good (tho not astounding) but I did have one main problem with it. The main character, who loses her husband to a sudden auto accident, along with his ex-wife, is only two weeks away from the date of his death when she begins having attraction to and feelings for another man who comes into her life. Though the book repeatedly says she struggles against this attraction, because she feels like she is betraying her husband, I still don’t really believe that that can happen. Grief is too encompassing, too overwhelming to the body, too numbing to the mind, for even a possibility of looking at another man with that kind of reactions. I have had three friends who lost their husbands, and they are still grieving the loss a year and more later. And by all accounts our heroine was much in love with her husband. So, no, I could not suspend belief on this point. Therefore I had trouble with one of the main tenets of the book; their eventual bowing to their love and giving in to it.
The problems with the step-daughter were much more believable, but even there, the change in the stepmother—stepdaughter relationship seemed to almost turn on a dime when one of them got into trouble and feelings of affection flooded them both. This, too, would happen much more gradually, and though that was more realistic in it’s portrayal, with the two females gradually learning to get along better, the end seemed to come in a “whoosh” and all was going to be hunky-dory after that. So I guess I should give the book 3.5 stars, as the book did show some of the problems of taking on a teenager when one has never had children or much interaction with them. And the teen’s thoughts and reactions were portrayed honestly, so you get a look at both sides.
All in all, a good book, but not a great one.
Excellent book