4.5 stars

Gideon has always been the golden child of his small town. He wasn’t just popular, athletic, and smart; Gideon was also nice. When he joined the military after high school and later was one of the only survivors of an ambush, people in town looked at him as a hero. That’s not what Gideon saw in the mirror, at least not anymore.

Rory never felt like she was anything special. Nobody seemed to notice her and if they did, it was often in a negative way. When she was being bullied in middle school, her best friend’s high school brother put an end to it. Gideon was already her crush, after that she compared everyone to him. So here we are, years later, and he’s returning to town just as Rory is getting ready to leave and start a new life.

I love the way Gideon can look at himself now and realize that, although he was a nice guy growing up, maybe he wasn’t as great as everyone thought. Things always came easy to him so there was no reason for him to be anything but nice. He didn’t have any sort of competition. Not with the girls, no on the football field, not with his friends. When he world is turned upside down while on a mission, he doesn’t know how to deal with the setback. He’s never really had any roadblocks. His life quickly spirals out of control and he pushes his loved ones away. He decides to head back to his small town to rebuild his life. Not because he thinks it will be comfortable there, but because he has nowhere else to go.

With Gideon staying in one of her family’s rentals while he waits for his house to be ready, it’s no time at all before Rory runs into him. Rory is still enamored with the man, but she also sees him as a human instead of someone to put on a pedestal like the rest of the town does. She listens to him and he finds himself opening up to her. They have a special connection. Gideon believes Rory can do anything she sets her mind to and helps her to find her confidence. These two are fantastic together.

This book has many of my favorite tropes with the depth of story to back them up. The way Rory and Gideon understand one another is a beautiful thing.

**I received an ARC of this book courtesy of NetGalley and the publisher. All opinions expressed in this review are my own and given freely**

I might just be growing out of this series. The more recent releases just aren't hitting like the others.

Something that bothered me in this book was that Rory was shown to be naive, at least at first. She's a romantic, a big reader, but then she didn't know anything about sex? Had to go to her sister to talk about it? But she was a big romance reader? I would have liked to see her naivety depicted as knowledge that was maybe unrealistic because it was acquired through stories rather than just not knowing. Then she would have this more complicated romantic narrative with this complicated figure, and she'd realized how layered her own, realistic story could be. But that might just be me.