Reviewed by Annika

TITLE: The Rebuilding Year

SERIES: The Rebuilding Year #1

AUTHOR: Kaje Harper

NARRATOR: Gomez Pugh

PUBLISHER: Self published

RELEASE DATE: September 20, 2017

LENGTH: 9 hours, 44 minutes

BLURB:

It took losing nearly everything to discover what they can’t live without.

A few excruciating minutes pinned under a burning beam cost Ryan Ward his job as a firefighter, the easy camaraderie of his coworkers, his current girlfriend, and damn near cost him his left leg. Giving up, though, wasn’t an option. He fought and won the battle back to health, over a painful year. Now, choosing a new profession, going back to school, and renting a room from the college groundskeeper should be simple.

Until he realizes he’s falling in love with his housemate and things take a turn for the complicated.

John Barrett knows about loss. After moving twice to stay in touch with his kids, he could only watch as his ex-wife whisked them away to California. Offering Ryan a room seems better than rattling around his empty house alone. But as casual friendship moves to something more, and emotions heat up, the big old house feels like tight quarters.

It’s nothing they can’t learn to navigate, until life adds in unhappy teen kids, difficult family members, and mysterious deaths on campus. Rebuilding will be far from easy, even for two guys willing to open their minds, and hearts.

REVIEW:

Can you say perfection? I loved this book to bits and had a very hard time putting it down. This is what a great slow burn romance should be like.

Ryan, battle scarred from a building collapsing on him is changing direction from being a firefighter to med student. Only, being vain and leaving his cane at home has him landing on his back in the middle of school, helping him from his tumble is the college groundskeeper John. A few weeks later, they run into each other again a solid friendship forms. Not long after that Ryan rents a room in order to get some peace and quiet from his partying former roommate.

I loved the relationship between John and Ryan. There were no hidden agendas, no miscommunication or any of the other clichéd plot points we’ve read so many times before. The two were solid from the start and that never wavered, not when they slowly realized that they had feelings for each other and not when John’s surly teenage son showed up on the doorstep. Sure they had their issues, they wouldn’t be human otherwise, but there was no huge drama for drama’s sake.

There was also a secondary plot to this book, where young college girls seemed to end up dead for various reasons. , it was the one thing in this book that isn’t entirely believable – but I certainly didn’t care. I’m a huge fan of mysteries and romantic suspense so I gobbled all this up with a grin on my face and kept wishing for more.

Gomez Pugh was a fantastic narrator, I think this might be the first book I listen to that he’s narrated, but it will for sure not be my last. He did everything right, the different voices for the characters but more importantly, he narrated with feeling. He took you to the world Harper created with her words and kept you there until the very end of the book. I would gladly listen to much more, but it seems like all good things must come to an end.

I believed in this story and the people in it, it was credible. Normally I read books to get away from reality and everyday life and escape for a while, but with The Rebuilding Year you escape to another reality, someone else’s everyday life and I for one couldn’t have been happier. These were everyday people and events you could relate to, with flaws, scars, fears and hopes and dreams. For me, books with “real” people are the best kind of books.

It was a true pleasure to listen to this book, and I can only hope that there are plans for the second book to be made into an audiobook, I for one will be first in line!

RATING:

BUY LINKS: 

Amazon

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