Reviewed by Kat

TITLE: Life after Love

SERIES: Calston Cove (Book 1)

AUTHOR: JJ Harper

PUBLISHER: Self Published

LENGTH: 258 pages

RELEASE DATE: September 25, 2023

BLURB:

All he wanted was a new life, not a new love.

Merrick
Merrick has the perfect life: a husband, a baby, and a great future ahead of him. Until all that is ripped away, and he’s left alone with his daughter. After two years, he knows it’s time to move on. To find a new life for him and Willow. It comes in the shape of a derelict mill house nestled in the hills above a Devon seaside town.

Drew
When Drew loses the chance to buy and restore the house he’s loved all his life, the last thing he wants to do is renovate it for the mysterious new resident. But something about Merrick Green intrigues him, and he feels compelled to lift the heaviness surrounding him. The fact that Merrick’s daughter seems to have taken an instant infatuation with Drew makes it easier.

As the two men become friends, Merrick battles with his attraction to Drew. How can he be interested in the ruggedly handsome man when he’s still in love with Josh?
Letting go of the past is hard, but with Drew by his side, he finds a way forward.

Life After Love is a sweet small-town, opposites-attract, hurt/comfort romance with low angst and a sweet little girl that everyone falls in love with.
The book deals with the loss of a loved one.

REVIEW:

JJ you really did it this time! Just Wow!

Merrick has just been going through the motions for the last two years. The love of his life, Josh, was taken so quickly. They have finally moved to the next stage in their lives, with the birth of their beautiful newborn daughter Willow, when they are delivered the devastating news…aggressive final stage Lung Cancer! For Christ’s sake he wasn’t even a smoker! And the final blow…Josh wasn’t going to fight it but chose “ to be with you until my last breath. I love you so much.” But all he has managed to do is to make sure to get up and live for his daughter Willow and remember. So he makes the ultimate decision, he is selling everything and moving across the country. Out of Busy London and all the hard memories to a new start in a quaint holiday town on the coast named Calston Cove in Devon. And he knows it’s the right place for him immediately. The old mill house needs a full restoration but he has found the perfect contractor that seems to understand his vision bring the old gal back to life.

Drew has lived in Calston Cove all his life and has no desire to ever leave. That choice has definitely had an effect of his love life or lack of it. When the old mill house, his dream home, comes up for action he knows he finally has the chance to fix it up for himself. He has spent all his life hanging around it and knows just what needs to be done. But that dream crashes and burns with him losing the auction. And now the gorgeous man with the precious little toddler wants him to restore his dream. But will this be the end to his dream or is more in store of being salvaged than the house?

You know when you choose a book and it touches you profoundly??? That was this book for me. Merrick’s love of his life was unfairly ripped from him just after they finally have their baby daughter. The pain of memories surrounding him reminding of what he had and how much he lost. The sorrow of losing someone so young to something so merciless as cancer. The need to start over somewhere new and then discovering that the house he chose was located in the perfect little seaside town to re-start his life and raise his precious daughter who would never know her father. And the surprising attraction that kickstarted him into living again. Merrick was the perfect mate for Drew. And Drew was the man to rebuild Merrick’s heart just like he was his new home.

This book has everything that makes you laugh one moment and cry the next. It is destine to be one of my Best of 2023 books. It touched me that deeply. This one passage says it all so perfectly “Grief isn’t something you get over. You just get used to it. It walks every step of the way with you, adjusting and adapting to the new you. Because life goes on. It changes, and you have to learn how to do things differently.” I hope you live it as much as I did!

RATING:

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