"i shouldn't be scared. you're the least scary thing in my life. you're not just tattooed on my skin. you're branded on my heart. woven into the fiber of my being. the most constant and reassuring person in my life."
This novel follows the honorary Eaton brother, Jasper Gervais. Sloane, the Eaton's cousin met Jasper when she was ten. She's had heart eyes for him ever since, as everyone knew, but he never was more than a friend or almost a cousin. Despite making her affection clear he always tuned her down, gently but still firm in his decisiveness.
Now adults, Jasper is a star hockey player and Sloane is a prima ballerina whose wedding is fast approaching. Both are miserable at the though of her marrying someone else, but are keeping quiet because the other must not feel anything but friendship, right? When her fiance's depravity is revealed in a video on her wedding day, Sloane runs away with Jasper, who is more than happy to get her way from her father and the man he chose as Sloane's husband.
The duo embarks on a road trip where they are forced to face the feelings they've been hiding for years. Sloane wants to take the reins of her own life and get out from under her father's domineering shadow. And Jasper has to face his own demons - the guilt he carries over the tragic death of his sister, his abandonment by his parents, the feeling of inadequacy that has stopped him from revealing his true feelings to Sloane for years.
This is a cute friends-to-lovers story with the already familiar cast of characters that make up the Eaton family. I loved the tenderness and the yearning -- and Jasper is such a good man and his story made me truly sad in how broken he was over things that were not his fault. But I loved how being with Sloane finally made him open up with everyone else, made him a better brother and friend - it was touching seeing him smiling when a point was made in the previous books how he never smiled and hid behind his baseball hats.
