3.5 Smooches!
Synopsis
Counting Stars is an emotionally charged romance about love and loss – and learning to live after everything you’ve lived for has died.
I was with him for six years. Derek was my life, my future, and my dream come true. We had it all – the house, the cars, rings on our fingers, and we were even discussing a baby. Derek was my high school sweetheart, my lover, and my best friend.
Derek is dead.
At only twenty-two years old I am a widow. I’ve spent the last year of my life filtering through self-help books – searching for a way to heal the remnants of my heart.
I am broken.
It is my incessant searching that leads me to booking a month long trip with The Donnelley’s Wild Land Tour’s. I was supposed to tour with Gracie – but she is incapacitated and she’s left me in Logan’s care. If I could, I would turn and walk away from this tour. But I can’t. This is my last chance at learning to live again.
Logan doesn’t know I’m broken. When he looks at me, I feel strong again. I feel alive. He pushes me to learn new things, to experience new ways, and to fight. Logan, in all his bluntness has taught me to fight for what I want and what I believe in. I don’t know how it happened, but Logan picked up the pieces of my heart and helped me to rebuild it. In him, I’ve found acceptance in the hardest thing I had to face.
We all have a path, and for me, my path has been beautifully painful. I was fated; both blessed and cursed, to love two men with the entirety of my heart. Looking back, I wouldn’t change a day, because the pain of the lost life I had with Derek led me to the beautiful present I cherish with Logan.
***This novel does NOT end in a cliffhanger. It is a heartwarming romance for everyone who loves a happy ending. This is the first of four novels – each novel will feature a different Donnelley Brother. This can be read as a stand-alone!***
Review
Reese is a young, heartbroken widow who lost her love at a very young age and thinks she will never be able to find happiness, peace or love again. After a year of still being in the grieving stage she decides she needs silence and to be away from the house she and Derek made together. So she finds an advert for retreats in the country and mountains and goes hoping for a month long retreat with a women, instead she ends up on a retreat with a rather broody and sometimes rude man named Logan.
These two don’t get a long at first but soon discover that maybe they are a better fit then anyone could have imagined but can each overcome their pasts love, hurts and heartbreak?
“I miss you so much it hurts. It hurts so deeply in my heart. It’s like there’s this hole, and with every beat of my heart, I feel the emptiness you left behind inside me.”
I’m going to be completely honest and say I sometimes struggled with this story. That doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy it, but it does mean that I didn’t love it. It was definitely a beautiful romance story that made my sigh and Aww and sometime tear up but I didn’t feel excitement or suspense or any real will they, won’t they moments.
“I do believe now that there is reason for everything. In pain, lessons are learned and chances are taken. Heartache can restrict, but it can also set you free.”
Reese did make me cry, her situation and the way she lost Derek really got to me and I felt her pain and hurt at trying to overcome her grief but just not being able to move on. I really loved her motivation to try and do something about it and the courage she showed throughout the story.
“There is something about Logan that makes me feel alive. He calls it as he sees it. He calls me as he sees me, and with his every word, I’m realizing that there’s really not all that much to me.”
Logan I also really liked as well. He was a rugged mountain man, I could picture him full of muscle and broad shoulders and his deep voice. He was slightly alpha but ultimately in the end very caring of Reese and determined to show how much he loved her. I also really loved the glimpses we got of his family and other brothers and I really look forward to some of their stories.
“Tell me you’ll be mine, Reese, and I’ll give you everything you want. Everything you need.”
However the reason for my 3.5 stars is because the plot just didn’t excite me as much as I wanted it to. It was definitely a lovely romance so if that’s all your looking for this book is great but for me there just wasn’t any action, suspense or drama and for me personally I do at least one of those things.
But like I’ve said before it was a lovely romance story, it definitely had its moments that I loved and I am looking forward to reading the other brothers stories.
Bethany
