Steadfast by Sarina Bowen Review
5 Smooches
Synopsis
She’s the only one who ever loved him—and the only one he can never have.
Jude lost everything one spring day when he crashed his car into an apple tree on the side of the road. A man is dead, and there’s no way he can ever right that wrong. He’d steer clear of Colebury, Vermont forever if he could. But an ex-con in recovery for his drug addiction can’t find a job just anywhere.
For Sophie Haines, coming face to face with the man who broke her heart is gut-wrenching. Suddenly, he’s everywhere she turns. It’s hard not to stare at how much he’s changed. The bad boy who used to love her didn’t have big biceps and sun-kissed hair. And he’d never turn up volunteer in the church kitchen.
She knows it’s foolish to yearn for the man who returned all the heartsick letters she wrote him in prison. But the looks he sends her now speak volumes.
No one wants to see Sophie and Jude back together, least of all Sophie’s police chief father. But it’s a small town. And forbidden love is a law unto itself.
Review
‘Of all the things I’d lost – my good name, the chance to get a decent job, my carefully restored car – none of them mattered as much as Sophie. She was gone from my life, and it was a permanent condition. No way to fix it.’
I seriously fall a little bit more in love with Sarina Bowen with each book of hers that I read. I haven’t read a ton of her books but more and more I am thinking that has been a vast mistake on my part. Steadfast is the second book in the True North series and while many of the characters we love are present the general tone and plot are so vastly different than Bittersweet. Steadfast deals with addiction, incarceration and all the devastation and pain that comes to anyone involved with someone with those demons.
‘I only raised a hand to push a lock of hair out of her face. That was my fatal mistake. Because everything changed when I touched her.’
Steadfast had me coursing through a varity of emotions. I loved how much the book made me feel and how much Sarina had me falling in love with the two main characters. Sophie and Jude have already been in love but when he decided his love for pills was the most important thing in his life someone paid the ultimate price. Now over three years later Jude is a convicted felon and irrevocably broken things with the one girl he could possibly love. These two have more to overcome than almost any couple I have read and all the pain that comes from the damages of the past. I liked Jude in Bittersweet but in Steadfast I fell head over heels in love with him.
‘See? I could have raw, angry sex with the love of my life.’
Steadfast was real and guttural. Parts broke me and then like a good salve the next bit would sooth and heal. Jude was so deeply broken and Sophie so hurt and full of questions. Neither are where they expected to be at this point in life but together they might just be able to make it all ok. I loved all the words. Beautiful, poignant words. The story was hard and beautiful but the end made it all worth it.
~miranda
