3.5 stars! Broken Dreams is the second book in Corinne Michaels’ Whitlock Family series. I loved the first book in the series and was excited to get to this one! This is a small town, fake dating romance, with two single parents!
Grady Whitlock moved back to Sugarloaf after the loss of his wife, he’s currently living with his sister while trying to get his flight business going. He also has his hands full with his 3.5-year old son Jett. He meets Addison one day while dropping Jett off at school, he’s in the same class as her daughter Elodie. Elodie is a founder of Run to Me, a safe haven in town for runaways and knows his brother Asher. Grady ends up helping Addison out when her tire and spare are flat, and finds out she’s a widow as well like him.
Addison decides to get out and date again, since she misses sharing her life with someone and doesn’t want to be continually seen as a widow when she returns home to Rose Canyon. Her best friend is getting married and Addison wants a date to take to the wedding…the only thing is all her first dates are going horribly. Around the same time Grady realizes he’s in need of a fake date. The investors he needs for purchasing a plane tell him they want a “family man” who has someone to bring to their parties and he tells them he does. When he sees her on another awful date, and his date is a no-show, they end up leaving together and he hatches up the fake dating idea. Only problem is he doesn’t want to really date, she does, and they start to have feelings…
“Sometimes I wish this wasn’t fake. That all of this was real.”
“There is nothing fake about desire.”
The first book in the series is still my fav so this one did fall somewhat short for me. It was fun seeing the crossover moments in this book, the Arrowood and Rose Canyon characters. The whole town is also alllll in their business. The couple felt different during their steamy times than they did the rest of the story, or just like a disconnect there for me. I wanted a bit more emotional moments for them. I will say I did appreciate seeing two single parents falling for one another who both connected over their mutual losses of their spouses! Usually it’s one widowed spouse in a story, so seeing both was an interesting take!
I received an ARC from Valentine PR, all thoughts in this review are my own. Broken Dreams is out December 1, 2023!