A warm-hearted and touching story about recovering after trauma, love and community. A new Woodlea rural romance by bestselling Australian author Alissa Callen. Healing doesn’t just take time, it takes courage… The scars country vet Ella Quinlivan hides are not solely on the outside. Men are off limits. She fills her world with her friends, work and the colourful community of small town … small town Woodlea. She also becomes custodian of a sandstone cottage of an elderly friend whose teenage daughter went missing two decades ago.
With a broken marriage behind him, Saul Armstrong is determined to recapture his dreams by bringing American bison to the Australian bush. He intends to stick to his side of the high wire fence that divides his farm from his distracting new neighbour, Ella.
When Saul calls out Ella for a bison emergency she isn’t just thrown out of her comfort zone by dealing with an unfamiliar animal. Slow-smiling and guarded Saul stirs emotions she’d long ago discarded.
As the summer heat parches the landscape and dust obscures the sun, hidden secrets come to light. Not only will Ella and Saul be tested, the connection forged between them will be threatened. Will love be enough to guarantee their freedom or will fear continue to dictate the direction of their lives?
more
Country vet Ella is happy in the quiet little town of Woodlea. Even the town matchmaker knows to keep her nose out of Ella’s business. Her distracting new neighbour is making her rethink all her dearly-held beliefs about being happier single, though. Except Saul obviously has his own demons in the past.
This is a story about two people overcoming their own personal demons individually and together. Both Ella and Saul have difficult pasts, though I did think they were a little overblown in both of them thinking they could never find love again. Yes, ugly breakups happen. Most people* realise that it sucks, take some time to get past things, and are aware even at an early stage that this too shall pass and one day, hopefully, someone better will come along. (*The exceptions, and reasonably so, being victims of relationship abuse who Do Not Want another relationship Ever, but that wasn’t the case with either of these two). I’m not that fond of the I WIll Never Love Again But Whoops There You Are trope because it makes the character an unreliable narrator, and in this case it was both of the protagonists, something which made me pretty impatient with them.
This is Alissa Callen’s seventh book in the Woodlea series, and I haven’t read any of the others, but I didn’t feel like I was missing out on too much by jumping in here. Woodlea is a vividly painted community suffering in the grip of the drought, even if it does appear a little too perfect to those of us who know what Australian farmers are currently going through, that’s forgivable because gritty financial struggles, depression and dying stock do not make a great background for romantic fiction. Instead Woodlea is the sanitised, prettified version of an Australian rural town we’d all like to see, inhabited by lots of friendly folks many of whom I suspect had their own books in the series already (there’s a wedding here for one couple). Still, there’s angst and tension aplenty, not least while Ella and Saul investigate the disappearance of a teen girl twenty years earlier to try and give her mother closure.
There were parts of this book I really loved: Callen does a great job of bringing rural Australia to life in her story and the way of life in a small town felt extremely realistic, especially with the town busybody poking her nose into everyone’s business. The community as a whole was really enjoyable to read about, it’s just that I didn’t feel all that invested in the romance at the heart of the story. Overall, I’ll give it four stars.
Disclaimer: I received a review copy of this book via NetGalley.
Opening up an Alissa Callen book is like walking into a happy home filled with family and friends, always a warm welcome with characters that are real and true, I loved being back in Woodlea and journeying with Ella Quinlivan and Saul Armstrong as they find their way to true love and happiness.
Ella is the local vet and has made her home in the country town of Woodlea she has many friends whom we have seen find love, but that is not what Ella is looking for she has too many scars from the past, she now is living in a beautiful homestead and helping the past owner and friend Violet discover what happened to her teenage daughter years before, getting to know her neighbour Saul has to stay on a friends only basis, but there is a connection that pulls Ella.
Saul, ex bronco rider is making a new life for himself back here in Woodlea after the breakup of his marriage, looking for love is not on his horizon, he is starting an American bison farm and has a big fence between him and his neighbour the beautiful vet Ella, but when he needs a vet for one of the bison the attraction and the emotions she makes him feel will be hard to deny and the more time they spend together helping Violet the closer they get.
There is so much to love about this story, it is so beautifully written with emotions that flow from the pages, Saul is such a quiet man with a wall built around him and Ella such a beautiful caring person but guarded with her feelings and things that she keeps to herself, they come together so beautifully after a few ups and downs to find they are free of the past and to a love that is deep and lasting, this is one that I highly recommend, and of course catching up with all of the friends from Woodlea was just so good, I loved the ending so many happy sighs, thank you MS Callen for another keeper.