✨ "...not everyone's path to love and marriage and family was a straight line. Some people just got lucky." ✨
SOME SPOILER-FREE THOUGHTS: What a perfect way to dive back into the Harlow-verse! I spent 2022 reading most of Melanie Harlow's interconnected series, so picking up this title felt like receiving a warm embrace from someone you hadn't seen in a while, but then spent hours talking to like no time had passed. I didn't know Joe or Mabel very well going into this book, but knowing everyone else in their life just made me love them and root for them even harder. It was simply an absolutely heartwarming story of change and purpose that I definitely recommend to all small town romance lovers!
Author: melanie harlow
Finished: october 31, 2024
Reading Method: e-book
Star Rating: 4/5 ⭐
Spice Rating: 2/5 🌶️
What To Expect:
✨ Small Town
✨ One-Night-Stand
✨ Accidental Pregnancy
✨ Opposites Attract
✨ Hockey Romance
✨ Long Distance
✨ Dual POV
✨ Interconnected Generational Family Standalone Series
✨ Book Five in Series
SPOILERS IN
3...
2...
1...
✨ "Ravished, I thought from the deepest reaches of my shattering mind. I'm being ravished for the first time, and it feels so good." ✨
Knowing I was about to dive into another Lupo boy's love story had me squealing before I even got to the first chapter!
And just as I had fallen in love with Gianni and Ellie's story in Taste, I was just as smitten with Joe and Mabel's journey to each other. But even better, they got the most endearing of meet cutes with plane confessions.
I loved the journey both of these characters went on:
Mabel felt like she'd lived her whole life too practically and then when she'd finally let go and experienced something that was just for her own pleasure—not for a timeline, or an expectation, or anyone else's perception of her—it ultimately ended up with her in the most critical stage of practicality: pregnant. Choosing to raise a child was the right thing for her since she wanted a family, she just never expected to skip the steps she had in getting there. And because she did those fears started creeping in as well. What if accidentally skipping those steps meant she'd never find someone to fall in love with her? To want a life with her?
Of course Joe has always loved his family, but his driving force had been hockey for as long as he could remember and there was no reason to ever change that. What worked worked and his success was the proof he needed that disrupting the formula was not going to benefit him. So when Mabel totally knocked his whole world upside down by someone wiggling her way into his eyeline—even before she'd let him know what their night had led to—it was so confusing. Then when he found out he was going to be a father, the floodgates unleashed and all he had was a piece of masking tape to try and hold it back. He didn't want a girlfriend, he didn't want a child, but he hated the days he wasn't with Mabel and he knew he would do everything in his power to give that baby the best life. But how could both be true? They couldn't right?
And in both of them hitting those walls, they realized the answers to all their questions were actually each others' questions.
It was really quite a beautiful arc for both of them filled with their individual realizations as they spent more time together and fell deeper in love with the new life they were creating with each other. Their relationships was built on all the big things: near-death, a wedding, sex, a baby. But through the discovery of the small things both in each other and themselves, they found the life they were meant for.
As much as I loved every moment between Joe and Mabel, both the loud and the silent ones, I have to say I think my favorite part of the entire book was a sneaky little tidbit that Harlow snuck in there in her perfect "iykyk" way...
"I chatted with Ellie about the pregnancy, her kids, the snowstorm, and being a working mom."
If you read her book Taste, you know exactly why that one moment of conversation was absolutely iconic of her to include so subtly! I definitely kicked my feet and giggled a little bit at that part.
And it's exactly those little moments that have me continuously recommending Harlow's books, now inclusive of her latest release Slap Shot Surprise! If this is the first book of hers you've read—or the Cherry Tree Harbor series is your first dive into the Harlow-verse—then I highly recommend you check out her other series as they all work together to tell a much larger and beautiful story.
All My Love,
Jane-Anne
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