Mae Nolan is existing in Australia; that’s the only way to put it. She arrived with her ex-boyfriend, who promptly cheated on her, and ever since then she’s been too embarrassed to go home and face the family who warned her against him. Now all she does is work long hours, save her money, and avoid anything to do with the opposite sex.
She’s just not interested.
Until one night she comes across a passed-out girl, Ciara, and ends up taking a phone call from her very irate brother. Her brother, Jack, is rude, snappy, and abrupt, but when Mae and Ciara become friends and Jack continues to text her, she starts to see the real him.
Somehow she ends up looking forward to their chats and starts revealing more and more of herself to him.
It’s a relief to talk to someone, and he feels safe because he’s on the other side of the world and she knows she’ll never see him.
Then he comes to Australia.
And she finds out he’s an international rugby star.
And he wants to meet up.
None of this was part of her plan, and she definitely wasn’t expecting what comes next.
About Ariya Cox
Ariya Cox was born and raised in the UK. She loves to travel extensively and this book was written in Latin America. Scenes throughout the book were written in Chile, Argentina, Peru, Mexico and Colombia. She’d probably write a lot quicker if she wasn’t constantly exploring but she has no plans to change that any time soon.
Of course she’s also been to Australia a number of times and spent time on the East Coast in her early 20’s working in bars and cafes and basically living the backpacking dream!
I received an arc copy but I also bought it thru Kindle Unlimited and read the KU copy as the arc arrived on the late side.
This is a brand new author and it appears to be her debut book. Its written pretty well and I did not see any spelling errors. It takes place in Australia and all the characters are from England or Ireland. In this story we only see the heroine's voice, Mae, we never hear from Jack or his sisters side of things.
The first part of the story featuring the texting was wonderful. I loved the story and how Jack and his sister and Mae meet and get to know each other. The only thing that did not make sense in this part of the story is that Jack has his sister move in and live with a friend of his but when Mae first talks with him, he claims to not know where the friend, Phoebe lives. Yet she is supposedly a friend of his watching out for his sister.
The 2nd part of the story is when Mae and Jack meet. Usually everyone loves meeting after a text relationship but Mae is very resistant to anything with Jack and so her reaction was a little strange. This is when I felt the story goes off the rails and why its 3 stars or less. She does something awful to Jack and truly to herself as well. And I did not understand it at all. She does grow a brain but it takes her a few weeks to get there and when she sees Jack again, I felt the story just abruptly ends. The ending was super disapointing. I wanted some sort of epilogue or seeing them together finally and I just hated the way it ends.
Mae throughout this story seemed extremely immature. Her ex cheats on her twice and not just a bad decision but he cheats on her for weeks and she still says I love him and if he said I am sorry I would take him back. I felt she ran away from things way too easy and her attitude with the ex was just not how a 28 year old would act and was more like a silly 18 year old.
Jack was awesome. I felt her deserved a whole lot better than Mae and that he was always giving to Mae and she was never really there for him as he was there for her. I did not like how he kept secrets from her and how she was told that info but I felt her reaction was on the strange side and not how a 28 year old would react. I did miss hearing Jack's side of things as this was just Mae's viewpoint.
That said for a debut book it was written extremely well. I loved how Mae and Jack meet over the phone and I loved getting to spend time with Mae in Australia. The texting relationship was also really wonderful.
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