I love a story with a lot of character growth, and Devin sure learned a lot in this book. To be fair, Devin doesn’t even realize how terrible he comes across. It took me a while to get on board with this character because he is often awful, seeming to not think before he speaks. The thing is, Devin does think before he speaks. He thinks too much. He was trained to be a certain way in certain situations and to protect himself at all costs. In his mind, nobody is sincere or genuine so the things people say aren’t what they mean. This often has Devin saying things to Alex that are hurtful without him thinking that’s what he’s doing.

In the prologue, there are two sides of Devin shown. The reality is that he’s something in between. Nobody is perfect, but he’s also not needlessly cruel as seems to be the case. Of course, Alex doesn’t know that until almost two decades later and the impact of the moment has lasting effects on her. While Alex is a much more lovable and sympathetic character, Devin is the one who needs a hug.

There is much about this couple that I ended up liking once I got to know Devin. The problem I had was that it was so hard to remember that Devin was 42 years old. At eight years younger than him, the age gap between Alex and Devin isn’t very vast at this time of their lives, yet Alex was miles ahead of him in maturity. That’s fine if the story seems to be built to accommodate that, but I didn’t get the feeling Devin was supposed to seem so immature. Maybe emotionally, but not in the other ways. It took me out of the story every time I was reminded of his age or the age difference between the characters.

Overall, I enjoyed this story. Especially once I realized that the callous things Devin threw out in such an offhand manner were to protect himself, not to hurt Alex. He just couldn’t see beyond his own private bubble until it was almost too late.

**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.**