There’s just something about a second-chance love story that I find myself unable to resist. Maybe it’s the scene where the man finally says “I messed up, but I’ve never stopped loving you.” Maybe it’s the moment when the woman decides to forgive the man and love him again despite how badly she was hurt before. Either way, I just can’t get enough of these stories, and Once and For All satisfied me on so many levels.
Aubrey and Danny grew up together, even lived across the street from each other. In seventh grade, Danny made his move to make Bree his, and they were together until the end of their freshman year of college. Then Danny left Bree behind to join the Army without any explanation, and no goodbye. She was devastated. And in the past ten years, while Danny has been fighting the Taliban overseas, Bree has been waging her own personal war against two bouts of cancer. She’s trying to be upbeat and positive, but she no longer has a job and is living with her parents. Seeing Danny again has her flustered and reliving the pain he caused.
When Danny sees Bree for the first time in ten years, she doesn’t look like her usual self, and he can tell something isn’t right. Their reunion doesn’t go well. But he’s never stopped loving her, and when he discovers she’s wanting a break from her life, he blurts out the first thing that comes to mind to help her out. “Let’s get married!”
I loved so many things about this book. The characters were great – the main ones and the side characters. From Danny’s older brother, who is both his best friend, but also protective of Bree (and later becomes her confidant), to Danny’s regiment, all added extra depth and color to this story. Bree was a sweet and strong heroine, and I loved how determined she was to pick herself back up after all the heartache she’d experienced the past ten years. So many times I felt her heartache, too.
I’m not a big fan of majorly angsty stories, and thankfully this book was low in the over-the-top dramatics. I was concerned there would be other woman conflict, since Danny apparently had a reputation for being quite the player (in fact, when we first meet him he’s sneaking out of a woman’s house, and he doesn’t even remember her name…), but there wasn’t. And Danny and Bree actually talked about what happened in the past. What they didn’t do a good job talking about is their feelings for each other now and what they both wanted for the future. But if they had done that, there wouldn’t have been much to the book – you gotta have SOME angst, after all.
It’s rare that I’m impressed with an author’s first book, but I am with this one. For starters, there were very few editing/proofreading errors (YAY!). The writing was really good. The plot moved along at a good pace. In fact, I started this book after dinner and read it all the way until the end – I was that drawn into the characters AND the story. The characterization was really good, and the backstory for Bree and Danny was compelling and explained enough that I could understand why they were still hung up on each other, even after ten years apart. I thoroughly enjoyed seeing them fall in love with each other again. And when an author can get me so invested in secondary characters that I want to drop everything and keep reading the series, that’s the sign of a good author. If you’ll excuse me now, I’m going to sign off and start reading Michael’s story!
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