Series: Blue Cedar Falls, #2
Traits & Tropes: second chance; small town
Publication Date: 08.23.22
Genre/Setting: Contemporary; Western North Carolina
Heat Level: 2
Rating: 3.5/5
More than ten years have passed since May Wu was a bookish teenager chomping at the bit to leave her small North Carolina town after graduation. She’s become a successful travel writer who’s up for anything, but that gusto is put to the test when her latest assignment sends her back to Blue Cedar Falls. She immediately runs into her ex, Han Leung, the guy she still uses to measure all other dates against and he’s still even more handsome now and just as easy to talk to as ever.
Han has always put his duty above everything else, setting aside his dream to open a restaurant of his own so he could keep his family’s business afloat after his dad’s passing. But when May rockets back into his orbit, Han finds it harder to keep ignoring all the desires he’s been tamping down for over a decade. Unfortunately, nothing about their circumstances has really changed and the reasons they broke up before are all still valid, or so it seems.
I really enjoyed the first book in this series, so I was very excited for this follow-up, especially as a North Carolina native myself. There were parts of this I loved and it had me longing for a visit to the mountains, but there were also bits that were very lackluster for me, most of them stemming from the heroine. May and her struggles with fitting in and being bullied were very relatable; though I wasn’t bullied for the same reasons, her resultant insecurities were definitely familiar to me. What was frustrating and disheartening for me was how long she allowed that high school experience to define every aspect of her life. Her insistence on shaming and bad-mouthing an entire town because of the behavior of one person, an ignorant child no less, was a bit much and grew to be repetitive after a while.
May’s bitterness just began to seem like hypocrisy with a huge lack of empathy. She blazed onto the page with the same sort of judgmental mentality she had wanted so desperately to leave behind. She had no awareness of anyone else’s feelings but her own and it was pretty sad to see how little Han’s emotions mattered to her and how aware he was of that fact. Han’s character arc was also a bit puzzling to me just because he’d made this huge mistake that I would’ve struggled to forgive myself and, though I understand why it happened given the timing, it still just felt like an unnecessary addition to a story that was already drowning in angst. Some of that angst did grow repetitive as Han and May seemed to have the same conversation/argument over and over again and between that and the deep examination of May’s lasting scars from her high school bullying experience, the romance definitely took a backseat.
Also, I’m tired of reading about this idea that hometowns are poison and anyone who wishes to remain and make a place for themselves in their hometown is some sort of loser. The first half of this book especially was laden with this ambitious ideal that quickly becomes toxic as it sews this insidious idea that one must always strive for more and better. Not that there’s anything inherently wrong with desiring more, but it is all too easy to become obsessed with this ambition and fail to be appreciative, or to even notice, what one has already gained or been blessed with. Fortunately, I think this is something May recognizes in the end, and it saved the book for me. Achieving her dreams had not made her truly happy and she took steps to correct this and follow her heart in a way that made her much more fulfilled by being true to herself. I was satisfied by this ending and it definitely felt like Han and May would have a firm HEA together, but I still would’ve liked to see a bit more romance in their story.
I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.
https://www.bookbub.com/reviews/2432092763
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4957952136
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