Sandra @ My Fiction Nook

This was a beautiful, sweet and endearing romance between a man who wasn't easy to love and a man who saw beyond the scars to notice the insecure, frightened boy inside. 

This was an intense journey of healing the inside, of finding your stride and seeing love for what it is when it is offered freely. Some of the hardest wounds to heal are the ones that aren't immediately apparent. 

And while I would have liked for Ara to get a bit more professional help as far as his flashbacks are concerned, this was a pleasure to read.

"Time heals all scars, but love mends the deepest wounds."

A cynical person might sneer at the insinuation that a man who's lived in solitude and hiding for seven years, ashamed of his scars, can be healed by the love of another, could overcome his self-hatred, but I am not feeling very cynical today. A cynical person might say that Ara deserved what he got after being such an ass before the accident, but I'm not that person. Seven years of self-inflicted solitude and self-hatred are more than sufficient penitence, and Ara had suffered enough. 

Ilias isn't perfect, and he makes mistakes when trying to figure out how best to approach this thing with Ara, but his feelings are genuine, and I completely believed him when he insisted he found Ara beautiful. I believed him when he struggled to make sense of his employer early on, when he stumbled and when he had a backbone and wouldn't allow Ara to push him around. I also liked the bit of backstory we were given, as far as his previous love life and his family life on the farm were concerned, even if it didn't play much of a role in this book.

I believed Ara when it was so difficult for him to believe someone could love him for what's inside of him, without asking for anything in return. I believed his struggle, his fears, his one step forward and two steps back, his hesitation in reaching out for what he thinks he doesn't deserve. 

I loved Ms. Sprigs - she was a warm, constant presence who gently prodded them along, quietly and unobtrusively. 

The dialogue felt organic and fit the two men depicted, and the timeline, while compressed in some spots, flowed nicely. I liked the difference between Ara before and after the accident, and how he seemed to grow into himself as the plot moved along.

The writing was also quite well done, and seamless, considering there were two authors involved, though it wasn't always exactly clear who was speaking at any given time. I had to re-read a few sentences here and there to figure out who was doing the talking. Some of the writing was also more telling than showing, but didn't distract from my enjoyment of this novel. 

I'm very glad I took a chance on this book when I hadn't read anything by these authors before. 

** A free ARC was kindly provided by Dreamspinner Press. A positive review was not promised in return. **