When the past is forgotten for real, yet remains a hurtful memory…

Synopsis

Sometimes when you can’t see the way forwards, the best thing to do is to look back…

When Jessie left home at eighteen, she swore she’d never go back. But when life takes a turn for the complicated, she’s forced to move in with her twin, Isaac, and his two best friends. To her dismay, one of these is Elliot, the boy Jessie once loved, until his life was changed forever by a terrible accident that Jessie still blames herself for.

Cohabiting with three alarmingly unhouse-trained males was not in Jessie’s life plan so when Isaac, Elliot and Arthur offer her a generous rent discount if she’ll help them with their ‘Boys to Men Project’, designed to end years of disastrous dating, she reluctantly accepts the challenge.

As Jessie embraces the comfort of being home, revelling in her new job at her parents’ day centre full of people determined to grow old disgracefully, she realises her housemates aren’t the only ones needing to make some changes. And maybe, if she can finally forgive herself for Elliot’s accident, she can start to look forward to a future, with or without him by her side.

My review

Jessie left her home at eighteen, with the intention of never ging back. However, now she has no other option than moving in with her twin brother Isaac.
But she couldn’t be more shocked realizing that she would not only be living with Isaac, but also with his two best friends. Normally it wouldn’t be such a great deal, if it weren’t that it would mean living together with Elliot, Jessie’s first love. A first love that never took off, as Elliot’s life changed dramatically after a terrible accident that Jessie blames herself for.
Yet Jessie finds herself helping the three men with their ‘Boys To Men Project’, with the purpose of finding love, and show people Isaac, Arthur and Elliot can be real adults.
Being back home means for Jessie to find back a lost comfort, making people’s day while working at her parents’ day centre and perhaps even find a way to forgive herself for Elliot’s accident and finally have the chance to move on? 

Reading a story written by Beth Moran is not always easy. Not because she is a terrible writer, on the contrary! But it’s just that she writes stories where her characters had gone or have to go through terrible things…
Yet I also know that every tear will be worth as in the end, I will have read a beautiful, hopeful and heart – warming tale 

At the beginning, I found it hard to understand how Jessie would be able to stay away from her family, and especially her twin and also best friend Isaac. Even knowing that something terrible had happened in the past, and she is still blaming herself for it, I couldn’t do what she did as I am also very close to my brother and my parents. 

And not knowing what had happened, or what the consequences were of that accident, had my mind going in overdrive. I NEEDED to know what exactly happened, and how it had affected everyone. So meeting Elliot for the first time was somehow a shock to me, as he appeared to be rather unscratched.
But it’s only after getting to know him better and having Jessie’s flashbacks that I truly understood what the accident did to Elliot. 

While the focus was mainly on Jessie and her feelings of guilt and feeling at loss, I found that this story went much deeper than just a woman going back hope and meeting her first love again.
Yes, absolutely, it was great to read how Jessie finds her home again, and even excelled at her job. Yet it felt also like a lesson somehow. Because starting all over again, like Jessie, but also like Elliot, is not easy. Especially as you are not the person who you were before, or the person people expect you to be. 

It broke my heart to see how Elliot is still struggling with just life in general. But on the other hand it also melted my heart to see how he keeps on trying to be an example to children, by showing that different doesn’t mean not good enough.
I for sure could comprehend Elliot’s anger when there was some wrong – doing and I cannot say I would have been able to keep my calm either!. 

This story is filled with wonderful, marvellous but also hilarious moments! Especially Arthur deserves his own credit as his behaviour was often odd, yet it made me smile if not laugh every time he entered the scene! 

Beth Moran showed again with this book how wrong we sometimes can be in our own head, and like in Jessie’s case, even sabotage ourselves in a way, because of our guilt.
But she also shows us that sometimes life goes as it goes, and we cannot keep on carrying that guilt around. Because not always that guilt is justified.
And that perhaps a second chance can be found.  

While reading, I managed to keep my tears where they belonged, yet those last few chapters, with an amazing revelation that perhaps didn’t come as a total surprise, I found myself crying of joy. And when a book can bring you to express such emotions, you knew you read something amazing!