I'm so happy I read this book! Lately I've been looking for good romantic suspense novels because I've been on an adrenaline kick and this
one hit the spot. On top of that, it combined two of my favorite tropes of all times: on the run, and childhood friends to lovers.
Whenever I read about a character who's on the run, what really fascinates me is seeing how they manage to escape risky situations, what are the
precautions they have in place, their escape plans and all the little mental memos they need to keep in mind to make sure they make it out alive. On this
front, this book totally delivered. I was holding my breath from the very start when introduced to the heroine's situation and even as the novel
progressed the adrenaline never stopped running in my veins as the situation got dicier and dicier.
Now onto the romance itself. As I said, I am a huge fan of characters that knew each other as kids, grew up together and then became friends and lovers.
In this case, there is an age gap, but still it's clear how much Travis and Faye cared for each other in their younger years. They were both subject to a tough
family situation and had to be each other's rock. Now, in the present day, Travis has finished his time in the military and needs to find Faye to keep the promise
he had made to her before leaving and take her of her, giving her a better life that she had been handed.
I absolutely adored how dedicated Travis was to finding Faye, the little girl he always wanted to protect and that he now cannot find anywhere. Seeing
him so committed to finding her warmed my heart and knowing their backstory, when he started to develop feelings beyond friendship for her, it felt
natural. Together, they worked as a couple. They have a past together and they stayed in contact through the letters Faye sent him through the years.
When I first heard that an age gap was involved I had been a bit apprehensive that it would translate into inappropriate thoughts when Travis and Faye were
only in their teens, but the author handled it beautifully and respectfully, so that even though Faye had been developing romantic feelings for Travis
for a while now, he basically only noticed her in that way once she was a grown woman. Oh, another thing that I was surprised by but that also made me
insanely happy is how human Faye appears. She is a fighter, but is also vulnerable. Sure, she counts on Travis to know what he's doing when it comes to
keeping everyone alive and simply dealing with unsavory individuals (I'm so trying not to spoil anything here ;)) but when she cannot count on his and
she finds herself in a risky situation, she is the type of person who will assess what's going on, come up with a plan and execute it. And I just thought
that we need more heroine like Faye. She is also not portrayed as super model beaufitul and you can actually envision her as a real person, especially when
the author described the toll that all those years barely getting by living on the run had taken on her.
I'm not going into the plot details here because I don't want to spoil anything, but something I will absolutely mention is how other characters are also
involved into the suspenseful part of the story, meaning that Faye and Travis were not the only two caught up in everything that happened, and that
sometimes they were there for support and help. This to me was so refreshing because often in books it seems like the entire universe starts and stops
with the main characters, but instead here we have other lives on the line, other people with their own back stories and priorities.
Writing style wise, this book was very well written and I cannot seriously believe this was a debut novel. Usually debut novels are naturally wonky, with either
an imbalance toward inner monologue or dialogue, or too many descriptions, stilted dialogues, or plots that are either uber-complicated with nonsense drama
or over-simplistic ones. Well, this was not the case and I am now very curious to see what else this author is going to write.