Thank you again so much to Rachel’s Random Resources for including me in this blog tour! Click on the banner for the rest of the tour schedule and more information.

Orla is a trainee reporter with a five-year plan: work her way up the career ladder, move to London and secure a job on a big national newspaper. She doesn’t want a boyfriend, he’s only going to hold her back anyway.

Aiden spends his life travelling the world and living in a tent. He knows his goal: to photograph animals and raise awareness of global warming and wildlife conservation. He’s definitely not looking for a relationship past the odd casual hook-up!

So when Orla and Aiden’s lives collide, they do everything to not fall for each other – with the opposite effect. But they stick to their plans, and go their separate ways…

Five years later, they meet again…

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Carla Burgess was born in Solihull and now lives in Chester, UK, with her husband, three children, dog and bearded dragon. She has a degree in English Literature and Psychology and started her working life as an editor on a magazine. She now works for the NHS.

Disclaimer: I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own. Thank you to Rachel’s Random Resources, Netgalley and HQ Digital for this free copy. All quotes in this review are taken from the Advanced Reader Copy and may change in final publication.

This book’s premise was certainly interesting and I feel like this gave me some “what if” feels in my own life, which thank goodness I got to see play out in the form of a romance novel rather than real life. I’ve always thought about what would have happened if the person I thought I loved in the past ended up coming back into my life after we both had some growing up to do separately. Would we still want to be with one another? Would we be two completely different people? Would we even remember what we went through five years ago?

This book let me think about all of those thoughts and more, and the way that Burgess wrote this story was great. I think I could have done a little less of the flashbacks in the way that Burgess had this novel, or at least formatted a different way, but I’m still very glad that she included their past from five years ago in this novel. It showed whether the characters went through any personal growth as well as professional – which seemed to be the main reason why they didn’t wind up together in the first place – and it felt like it brought everything full circle.

I feel like the development of the relationship between Orla and Aiden was well written, both their first development and then the current one. I feel like there’s some sort of negative stigma of really fast building relationships being unrealistic, and while sometimes I can agree with that if I don’t feel any genuine chemistry between the characters in question, I didn’t get that vibe with this one. I think that it worked out in this one, and I liked seeing how that relationship changed from when they first knew each other.