A COACH’S BOYS COMPANION STORY
She didn’t want to be in love with her best friend… Loving her best friend is normal. Falling in love with him… That’s a different story altogether – especially when she’s eleven years older than he is.
He knows that only one thing in life really matters…
Jake Evans has seen too much heartbreak, both before the war and after. He’s learned to cherish the people in his life, some more than others – his neighbor, for instance. She’s intelligent, successful, lovely, and the woman he’s been in love with for eight long years. She’s also got a hang up about his age. Can he overcome her doubts and convince her that they can have a long and wonderful future together? Or will he have to content himself with being nothing more than a friend forever?
more
For the most part, I enjoyed this companion novel to the Coach’s Boys series. There were some funny, lighthearted scenes and banter that made me smile and laugh out loud a few times as well as some sweet, tender scenes that were just perfect for Jake and Wendy’s romance. I appreciated the older woman with a younger man story line as it isn’t done often in books, but I think happens more often in real life. My mom is 13 years older than my dad and they’ve been together for 35 years. My mother-in-law is also 13 years older than my father-in-law and they’ve been together for many years as well. It’s sad to me that it was such a big deal for Wendy for so long about Jake’s age because I’ve seen in real life at least two great relationships last with that kind of age difference. I was pleased when they finally got together.
SPOILER ALERT:
Other aspects of the book were a little hard to swallow especially with Wendy’s ex-husband, and while some of it was okay, there were parts that I wasn’t too crazy about. I understand helping someone in need, but it seemed to me at times, that Wendy’s part in helping her ex went a little too far. The role she played for him he no longer had a right to anymore. At one point, she tells him that he’s a good man, he just has trouble with the being faithful part of relationships. Well, that’s a BIG part of a marriage relationship and he violated it multiple times with multiple women. And continued to live that kind of lifestyle even after they divorced. His family continued to think of him as immature and untrustworthy right up until they found out about his illness, and while his illness may have gotten his attention, there didn’t seem to be much of a change in his behavior until then. And then suddenly, he becomes this wise, good man. It was just hard to buy, especially when he had continued to exhibit such behavior for so long. I don’t think he was all that great of a man for most of his life (certainly not the man of integrity that Jake was) and it bothered me that he was referred to as a good man who just had trouble being faithful.
END SPOILER ALERT.
While I didn’t care as much for the part of the story involving the ex, I did enjoy Wendy and Jake’s developing relationship and I appreciated Jake’s integrity in his feelings for Wendy and how he didn’t go out with a ton of women while he was really in love with her. There are a lot of books out there where a character is supposedly in love with someone else, but they date and have numerous relationships with other people while they’re “waiting” for that someone to feel the same and that makes it kind of hard to believe that they’re actually in love with them or to trust their feelings and their loyalty. I appreciate that Jake’s and Wendy’s characters were not like that as much as I’ve seen in other books I’ve read.
**I was provided a copy of this book by the author. All opinions in this review are my own.
Wonderful spin-off of the Coach’s Boys series. Wendy and Jake are great characters with depth. Jake is one persistent hero. He is going to hang on to the hope that someday Wendy will be his. Wendy’s life is bogged down by fear and boy does she have a hard time letting it go. The side characters were well done; playing some key roles but not overwhelming the story. Past friends from Coach’s Boys popped into the book from time to time. It was good to see where their lives were at.
Highly recommended author and series