Having Ryan Sterling for a best friend has always just worked…until he fell in love and married someone else.I shouldn’t want him, but we can’t help who we fall in love with, right?What if what we wanted was considered taboo? Do we cross that line by giving into temptation or do we sit by the sidelines to spare everyone involved?I never meant to do anything, but one thing changed everything.
If You Were Mine (Just Friends Book 1)
By ksmarshall
From the very first page I was sucked into this story. If You Were Mine was my first book by this author and she put me through the wringer. Ryan and Melody have been best friends for 20 years. Everything is fine and dandy until Ryan married their other best friend Raquel. I’m not a fan of love triangles but I couldn’t put this one down. I suggest you read this book you won’t be disappointed.
This is an intriguing, delicious, and forbidden tale of friends who push boundaries – and play with fire. Who will get burnt and who gets away unscathed remains to be known…
So I need to pick my jaw up off the floor. I am ready to scream and throw my kindle because I have to wait to find out the ending. The author has created a story that you feel like you can predict the ending and then…… BAM! You have no clue what has just happened. My words left me once I reached the end. Speechless!! My emotions were all over the place. The situations and circumstances that author creates is amazing and intriguing. I’m a huge fan of friends to lovers- but this one is twisted and different in ways you won’t believe. A book that will keep you hanging onto your seat the whole way!!
Ryan and melody have been friends for forever. Their circle of friends is close and share all secrets. Melody has feelings she has had for years, but has never voiced them. This is a take if friends who want more and find themselves in a situation they can’t control. Don’t even get me started on the ending – it’s a cliffhanger that leaves you begging for the rest of this story.
This book made me feel, feel, feel! The characters are real! They’re you! They’re me! They’re your friends, your friend’s kids! They’re characters who make mistakes. They’re lovers, they’re friends! How KS Marshall is going to resolve this will be hard for me to wait for!!! A new author to me, but definitely, will not be a stranger! Welcome to my author list, KS!
The moment I read this blurb I knew it was a book a HAD to read. Like pronto. It’s the first book by K.S. Marshall that I’ve read. One book in a duet means that of course I’ll be reading more from her, but reading If You Were Mine convinced me I had found a new author that promises and delivers on all the angst that I love and hate. I love an unrequited, friends to lovers story. But even more, I have a love/hate relationship with love triangles. If You Were Mine is the kind I love, it makes me anxious and giddy at the same time.
The story is narrated by Melody and Ryan, BFF’s and nothing more. Raquel is the other friend in this trio that claims Ryan as a boyfriend, and when we meet them, he and Raquel are married and trying for a baby. We then learn the history of these three friends through reflection and flashbacks. It’s clear that had Melody expressed any feelings aside from friendship for Ryan way back when things would be vastly different.
The true third wheel here is Raquel, and she’s a character that is not easiest to root for. So, I gave up trying. It really was no contest. I liked Melody, I liked Ryan, and I liked Melody for Ryan. Raquel is self-serving, not wholly unlikable, but if you’ve gotta root for someone I doubt it would be her. It may be the “What Raquel wants, Raquel gets” that rubbed me wrong. I like perseverance but this something altogether different. This is self-absorption that leads to deceit and manipulation, of both her husband and her supposed best friend. The thing is this seems par for the course for her. Lest I seem like I am only here to bash on Raquel, my thoughts on Melody and Ryan are complicated. Sure I want them for each other, but so many lines are crossed. There’s a BIG change in their relationship. They aren’t innocent of wrongdoing, and it has heartbreak, massive heartbreak written all over it. Marshall leaves us with a bit of a cliffhanger, and if things go the way I suspect it’s going to get extremely messy. Heck, it already is.
Okay, if you love angsty love triangles along the same vein as Kandi Steiners’ A Love Letter to Whiskey and the “What He Doesn’t Know” duet, I think you would enjoy this very much. I can’t wait for book two in this duet and to see what surprises Ms Marshall has for us. 4.5 Stars and recommendation.
Where do I start this review…. It was effing amazing what I read and I could not put it down. I read it in one sitting and stayed up late into the night finishing it because I had to know what was going to happen next. I mean K.S. did an amazing job of telling the story and yes the hell she did tell it.
We get to meet Ryan and Melody who are best friends since childhood and Melody has been keeping a huge secret from Ryan and that is that she is in love with him and wants him. As They go to college Melody has plenty of opportunities to tell Ryan she is in love with him but she doesn’t. Then she meets Raquel and they become best friends and then something awful happens well not really but awful for Melody. Ryan and Raquel hook up one night and become a couple. That breaks Melody’s heart but what can she do when she never told Ryan the truth.
Then Melody decides she is going to pull away from them and she starts but Ryan is not having that and when he asks her why she is pulling away she tells him the truth about how much she loves him and how she always has loved him. This is where the story gets good and Ryan will have to decide who he wants to be with stay with Raquel or be with his best friend ever Melody?
This is a new author to me, but I will certainly be looking out for her work in the future! This is the first novel in a duet. Ryan and Melody had been best friends since children, and now as adults the feelings change. Melody never expressed how she felt to Ryan and he married somebody else. No spoilers; this is a definite must read, you will not be disappointed. This is a beautifully written story which had me totally captivated throughout this addictive page turner, and I cannot wait to read the second part of this emotional roller coaster.