Can a perfect love heal even your deepest wounds? As a helicopter medic, Daniel Bliant saves other people’s lives. He’s cool under pressure, a calm presence for trauma victims on the worst day of their lives. So why can’t he heal himself? When he answers an emergency call at Phil’s Bar, he can’t believe who the bartender is: the beautiful woman he saw in his ER months ago and hasn’t been able to … been able to stop thinking about. But even though Annika is intelligent, lively, and gorgeous, he knows he should forget her. He hasn’t worked through his own trauma after the incident that left him shattered, so how can he possibly think about love?
Annika Mehta loves her job as a kindergarten teacher, even if the low pay means she has a side gig tending bar at Phil’s. She may be reeling from a bad breakup and the terrible event that caused it, but she knows she’s resilient. What she doesn’t need is Daniel. He’s wrong for her in every single way, but somehow, she can’t let him go.
This tear-jerker of a romance follows two souls in need of healing–when all roads lead back to each other.
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I have a soft spot for romances that revolve around grief and love’s power to overcome even the worst wounds. Shroff doesn’t hold back in showing the self-destructive ways people grapple with grief. In this way, the romance arc doesn’t start with falling in love, but with growing and giving yourself a chance to release the pain.
I found this story incredibly touching. As a person who has had to deal with sudden, traumatic grief, the depiction is as real as it gets. This is especially true with the SPOILER ALERT storyline about a school shooting, which struck me particularly hard as an educator myself. The story does not trifle with this topic or any of the more serious topics it presents. It demonstrates enormous respect, not only for its characters, but for all aspects of the grieving process, including the parts we cannot do by ourselves. Therapy and professional mental health services are depicted in a refreshingly positive way.
Love cannot in itself be the the cure for catastrophic loss, but is the result of proper healing.
Annika and Daniel’s story was sweet and authentic, and Shroff manages to convey the weight of such topics as racism, grief and maladjustment without miring the story in its own heaviness. This alone is a feat. But I also loved the way their Annika and Daniel’s Indian culture is served up as fact, and the source of love and support that Annika and Daniel receive. There is so much love in this story, it’s impossible not to get lost in it.
Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing a review copy.
Goodness, Shroff has written an achingly tender story about two people who have experienced the kind of pain you don’t wish on anyone, and each has dealt with it differently. It’s not for the faint of heart and my review will contain some spoilers.
From the onset, Then There Was You seems like a sweet romance. Annika is excitedly preparing for her first day as kindergarten teacher and Daniel is completely immersed in his work. Beneath the surface, though, lies immense pain. Annika suffered a miscarriage months ago and her fiance at the time broke up with her shortly after. Daniel was working in the ER that day when Annika was brought in and helped comfort her, though she doesn’t remember him there. Her pain echoed everything that Daniel had lost years before when his daughter was gunned down during a school shooting. It so happens that the school is where Annika currently teaches. Where Annika has been working at processing her loss and grief, Daniel has simply resorted to shoving it away somewhere and instead, drowns himself in work. Daniel has often thought of Annika since that day in the ER and when he finally sees her at a medical emergency he’s called to, he feels relief but also curiosity. There’s an inexplicable pull there that he can’t ignore, and so he quietly inserts himself into her orbit by starting to frequent the bar she works at part time. He knows he should be upfront with her about their previous meeting but he’s not sure how to approach that. Meanwhile, hanging out together brings a bit of sunshine into their lives.
I liked that the story dealt with personal pain and guilt on a very real level. It didn’t feel like Shroff rushed to resolve lingering anguish to get to the romance, particularly in Daniel’s case as he suffers from PTSD as well. If anything, I think it’s all handled rather sensitively. Also tucked into the plot is Annika’s parents push to see her settled with a proper man as they try to set her up with someone they think would be a good match. This would see her taken care of and also stop the endless gossips who’ve been muttering unkind things about her. The guy they’re not so subtly setting her up with is great but Annika hasn’t caught feelings for him the way she has for Daniel. But Daniel has so much to deal with on his own before they can move forward together, if that’s what they actually want to do.
Then There Was You is genuinely moving. My one criticism is the misleading blurb which makes the novel out to be a cutesy romance when it is clearly delving into some heartbreaking storylines – ones that need content warnings for some readers. Despite the sadness that permeates the romance, I liked this even more than Shroff’s debut mainly because of how cautiously she tread with Annika and Daniel’s emotional baggage. Had she not done that well I think it would’ve been a different reading experience. Shroff is only getting better and I’m looking forward to reading more from her!
~ Bel
Content warning/triggers:
miscarriage, school shooting, child death, PTSD, passing racist remarks, brief racist incident
*Source: Netgalley; ARC provided by publisher in exchange for an honest review
This book definitely needs some trigger warnings: miscarriage, school shooting, death of a child, racist attack.
I went into this story thinking it was going to be a light read and wow, was I wrong. This book was emotionally rough. It definitely puts the characters and the reader through the wringer. Daniel meets Annika on the worst day of her life and she doesn’t remember him. When they meet again later, the chemistry between them in burning. But Daniel has experienced severe trauma in the past and he hasn’t dealt with it. Annika is understanding and supportive and even willing to stand up to her parents, who want her to marry an Indian doctor and go to medical school herself, for him. This book has some great family moments and a lot of healing but it takes time and the characters need to work for it. It’s certainly not for those looking for a light read. But if you push through the trauma, it is worth it in the end.
*Received an ARC in exchange for an honest review.
Mona Shroff is a new-to-me author, and the Netgalley blurb/description of this novel made it sound right in my romance novel wheelhouse, but clearly, whoever wrote that blurb never bothered to actually read this novel, which bore little resemblance to the blurb. So, while I think Ms. Shroff has good writing skills, this book wasn’t at all what I expected, it’s pace was beyond slow, and while I didn’t really enjoy this novel, I realize that some might, which is why I am giving it a 2-star rating rather than a 1-star rating.
The basic premise of this novel is a sad one, and it contains a school shooting trigger, so be forewarned. Daniel Bliant lost his 5-year-old daughter, Sara, in a school shooting 5 years earlier. Trying to deal with his own grief through a whiskey bottle, as well as not really comforting his grieving wife was eventually the end of their marriage. He’s a nurse practitioner who moonlights on a helicopter emergency-response team, and it was he who comforted a beautiful Indian woman, Annika, when she miscarried her out-of-wedlock baby. She was planning to marry the baby’s father, but once her pregnancy was over, he ended their engagement in the emergency room. Daniel couldn’t get Annika out of his mind, and when he responds to another incident, he runs into Annika again, discovering that she’s a kindergarten teacher at the same school where his beloved daughter, Sara, was killed, but Annika doesn’t remember Daniel from her traumatic ER visit, and he’s content to keep it that way for a time.
Unfortunately, the romance aspect of this novel took a back seat to Annika’s disapproving parents, a very traditional Indian family who expect her to become a doctor when her dream job is teaching kindergarten–a waste of her talents according to her father, but it’s something Annika loves and is good at–this is her first year of teaching solo. Her parents also keep trying to match her up with an attractive Indian pulmonary surgeon, but there are no sparks between them, However, the chemistry between Annika and Daniel is off-the-charts. There are plenty of roadblocks on the way to their HEA ending, but the biggest roadblock for this reader was the extensive amount of time spent on discussions of Indian foods, spices, complete marriage ceremonies, traditional dances, parties, customs, long explanations of traditional clothing, and even more time spent on inter-personal relationships with family and friends–none of which really moved this story forward.
Daniel cannot even bring himself to walk into the school where Annika teaches–it’s where his daughter and others were killed. He’s never gotten over the loss and swears that he’ll never be a father again. But Annika loves and wants children, another stumbling block, as is the fact that when Annika discovers that Daniel was there with her when she miscarried and failed to mention it, she calls him a liar and ends the relationship. Both Annika and Daniel, while interesting and well-drawn characters, spend way too much times waffling–a pet peeve of mine. Again, had Ms. Shroff stuck to the core of this relationship, grief, loss, and moving on, and not veered off into seemingly endless passages on Indian cultural norms and prejudices, I would have found a lot more to like about this novel. As written, it lacked much forward momentum, and was, at least for this reader, a rather stagnant and dull read.
As stated, I voluntarily read an advance reader copy of this novel. The opinions expressed are my own.