Review:

High school sweethearts Sarah and Caleb Linwood have always been a sure thing. For the past seventeen years, they have had each other’s backs through all of life’s ups and downs, achievements, losses, stages, and phases.

But Sarah has begun to wonder… Who is she without her other half?

When she decides to take on a project of her own, a fundraising gala in memoriam of her late mother, Sarah wants nothing more than to prove to herself—and to everyone else—that she doesn’t need Caleb’s help to succeed. She’s still her mother’s daughter, after all. Independent and capable.

That is until the event fails and Caleb uninvitedly steps in to save the day.

The rift that follows unearths a decade of grievances between them and doubts begin to grow. Are they truly the same people they were when they got married at nineteen? Are they supposed to be?

In a desperate attempt to fix what they fear is near breaking, Sarah and Caleb make the spontaneous decision to join a grueling hiking trip intended to guide couples through rough patches.

Rating:

Review:

My success with books this week is 0 for 3. 3 books started, 3 books abandoned. I am in a slump that I hope doesn’t continue any further. I only made it about a quarter of the way through this one so the review should be short.

What I hoped to get: A cute little romance about a married couple who have lost each other in the years since their marriage and go on a retreat to find that cute, romantic love story again.

What I got: A rich, spoiled girl who regrets her life choices and decides that it is her husband’s fault that she is unhappy. Proceeds to drag him to a marriage retreat so she can further whine about her own choices.

I hated Sarah so much. Initially I had sympathy for her given the tragedy of her mother. But that sympathy disappeared the longer the book went on. She decided to be a stay at home wife and defers all of her decisions to her husband. She wants him to take charge because she didn’t feel worthy of being with him. So she defers to him for 15 years. And then the one time she decided that she didn’t want him to intervene, she blames him for over a decade of her unhappiness. Caleb is wonderful. He loves Sarah so deeply, and loved her mother too. He became part of their family and it was lovely. Hell, even when Sarah is threatening him with divorce he remembers to bring her Kindle on the retreat, with a portable charger AND remembers what she was reading. WTF?! This is the man she is dissatisfied with? Girl, get a therapist or leave that man alone!