The Boy Next Door
Adrianna DaneContemporary erotic romance
Available from Amber Quill Press
ISBN: 1-59279-543-9
June 2006
| Fifteen years ago her best friend and first love disappeared without notice. The boy next door, Reed, was gone suddenly. The boy she'd grown up with and learned to love, the standard by which she'd since judged all other men, and found them wanting. She was sixteen and he was eighteen. A month after he'd left, his mother and little sister moved out, then his father put the house up for sale. On her eighteenth birthday, she went to the tree house they'd lovingly shared, and consciously gave up on his ever returning to her. She herself had gone off to college, then worked as a librarian in another city, only to return home to help care for her ailing father until his death, and then to help her mother move to Florida. After fifteen years of believing she had outgrown the pain of that lost love, now she realizes differently. Now she owns her parents' home, she's working at the local library, and maybe now it's time to uproot the lilac bushes and raze the treehouse and so eradicate those old painful reminders.
Across the street in the darkness he waits, reviewing his life and recalling the dark secrets that even she was never told. Everything he has done in his life has been fraught with memories of her. Now he is back and he knows this is his only chance to reunite with Josie. But can the grief of the past fifteen years and the silence between them be overcome? Will Josie forgive him when she learns what happened in his house the night he left? Or will she maintain the walls she has long since erected around her heart? This is a fascinating short read, and I highly recommend it. I was caught up with both main characters immediately, and impressed with their depths and insight. The situations are realistic and true-to-life, and every reader, I am sure, will be hoping and praying for a happy conclusion.
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Reviewer: Annie |
