Rating: ★★★
Audience: Contemporary Romance
Length: 344 pages
Author: Melissa Wiesner
Publisher: Bookouture
Release Date: August 22nd, 2023
Image & Other Reviews on: Goodreads

BOOK SUMMARY:

An absolutely unforgettable and heart-shattering romance, perfect for fans of Colleen Hoover, Lucy Score and Carley Fortune, that does keeping secrets destroy true love?

Anna works two jobs to get herself through college and never, ever talks about her family. It’s easier to keep her distance from everyone until she can finally leave her old life behind. That is, until chance throws her together with Gabe …

Gabe is top of the class, in a fancy fraternity, and has a big, perfect, warm-hearted family. He is everything Anna is not. Their connection is undeniable. His silver-blue eyes pierce right through her, and he makes her laugh in ways she never thought possible. But Anna would do anything to stop Gabe from discovering her darkest secret, and the real reason she goes home every night to a cold, silent apartment…

When Gabe and his family get close to the truth, Anna runs, vowing to never see them again. But forever is a long time…

Years later. Tragedy brings Anna back to the town she grew up in—a place she escaped a decade ago. When Gabe wraps his strong arms around her, it’s like finally finding home.

But when the truth comes out after all these years, will both their worlds come crashing down? Gabe is the one person Anna trusts but what if he has secrets, too? And how much pain can two hearts endure, before they are torn apart forever?

It All Comes Back to You will make you laugh, cry with both joy and pain, and hold your loved ones tight.

Thank you to Nerd Fam and the author for a gifted copy.

HERE WE GO.

I went in with best intentions on this one. I was excited to try a new author and the initial premise was good. Consider me intrigued.

And while plenty of the book is fine. I had one glaring issue. The FMC, Anna. Based off of her past and situation I could understand why she ran away the first time…and maybe the second time too. I’ll give you that one. But then, that became the whole plot. Anytime that Gabe wanted to have a good conversation, maybe a hard one too, or was telling her something she absolutely needed to hear, Anna would run. And I’m talking, take a plane, I’ll see you in a few years run and it was exhausting.

The timeline went from the “past” for half the book and then jumped three years every chapter in the second half. The whiplash created by this made the romance feel lack luster. I appreciated that there was no romantic entanglement when they first met, but I would have loved more true swoony moments to actually feel some chemistry between them.

All of the supposed reveals and turns are nothing you weren’t expecting from the beginning. My will to keep going felt dashed and I kept waiting for this book to wrap things up.

Overall audience notes:

• Contemporary Romance
• Language: mild
• Romance: fade to black
• Violence: low
• Content Warnings: child abandonment, domestic violence (side plot/character), drug use/addiction

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