Reviewed by Kat
TITLE: Worth the Wait
SERIES: Worth It (Book 1)
AUTHOR: C F White
PUBLISHER: Self Published
LENGTH: 321 pages
RELEASE DATE: July 31, 2025
BLURB:
It was never over. It was just waiting.
Nathan Carter didn’t return to Worthbridge looking for a second chance. He came back for a roof over his head, a job that pays, and maybe, if he’s lucky, a way to connect with the teenage son he’s barely known. Life in the army taught him how to survive, but not how to be a father… and definitely not how to live with the choices he made the day he walked away from everything. Including Freddie Webb.
PC Freddie Webb never left Worthbridge. Not the town. Not the ghosts. Steady, dependable, the man everyone trusts to hold the line when things fall apart, he’s spent years keeping his head down and his heart locked up tight. But all that control shatters the moment a routine arrest throws him face to face with the boy he once loved… and the son that boy now has.
What started between them as teenagers was messy, intense, and unforgettable. Fifteen years later, it’s no less complicated. Eespecially with Alfie, Nathan’s angry, guarded son, caught between them and already spiralling toward trouble.
As old desires resurface and old wounds reopen, Nathan and Freddie are pulled back into each other’s orbit. But with the whole town watching, tensions rising, and the past refusing to stay buried, they’ll have to decide: play it safe… or risk everything for the love they never got to finish.
Because in Worthbridge, the past never stays buried.
And some loves are worth every second of the wait.
REVIEW:
Second chance romance with a new-to-me author…yes please!
Nathan Carter has no choice but to leave his Army career, go gather his teenage son that is getting into more and more trouble and seems to be leaning towards following his mother’s bad choices. He’s now forced return to the town and life he never wanted to see again. Too many skeletons that need to be left buried. His son Alfie may be the result of a dare gone badly when he was young and trying to hide his sexuality from his angry father. He knew, deep down inside, that Freddie wasn’t just his best friend. Nor a friends-with-benefits. But admitting his feelings for Freddie just wasn’t happening. So joining the military and becoming a man, like his father demanded, and taking responsibility for that night was all he knew to do. But breaking his and his best friend’s hearts was simply collateral damage. Police Constable Freddie Webb never left the small costal town of Worthbridge. He was born and raised there, along with his sister, by his free-spirited mother. He also fell in love with his best friend growing up together. But he knew first-hand all that Nathan had endured, since his mother’s tragic death, from his strict, mean-spirited and hard nosed father. Nathan had been forced to grow up quickly and Freddie was his only constant in his lonely and sad life. When Nathan accidentally knocks up a girl at a party, where a game of spin-the-bottle goes badly, Freddie knew their life as he imagined was suddenly a dream that, like a bubble, burst. But what he never imagined would happen, fifteen long years later, was that he would be arresting the teenage boy with his father’s same bright blue eyes. Eyes that were forever etched in his memory and soul. When he comes face to face with those same eyes he never thought he would see again, at the police station, life is tilted on it’s axil and now what is he to do? But sometimes life and love are Worth the Wait!
This was a bit angst filled. There is always so much drama in small, hometown life. Everyone knows everyone’s business and there is very little privacy to be had. This book has it all in spades. Watching Nathan having to drag himself home and put up with his father in order to try and put his son in a safer place was brutal. He tucked his tail (and honor) between his legs and came back in hopes of helping Alfie. But Worthbridge isn’t the same sleepy town of his youth. A corruption is brewing and Alfie is thrust in the middle of it. Nathan definitely had his work cut out for him. He may have been providing for the boy but his absence and Katie’s demons let a lot slide before it was almost too late to help Alfie. Thankfully he finally let loose with who he had become before it was all too late.
Add in all the previous and current flames/flings that Freddie had to try and drown out the sorrow in his heart from the one that got away.
- Reece, his buddy with benefits that he used to scratch the itch from time to time, knew his secret and believe was taunting them to push them together. I don’t think he was as bad as I first believed. And I’m looking forward to his story next.
- Poor Jude! I truly believe that, if circumstances had been different, he and Freddie could have made a go for it. But those weren’t in the cards for them. I am hoping that Jude get’s his story too. He was a sweet and caring guy and needs his own personal HEA too.
I also hope that we get to the bottom of this corruption story. I don’t think that the rich snake, Graham Radley, is going to stop his illegal empire and I am concerned why he is sniffing around Freddie sister. Could he be the missing Dad to baby Ryan? Or what kind of “job” is he offering Piper? I hope that means we get to see more of Nathan and Freddie in the next book.
RATING: 
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