title: All Our Secretsauthor: Michelle Gross
published: 12 December 2022
publisher: A Bit of Everything Romance
genre(s): contemporary, paranormal, romance
pages: 455
source: Xpresso Book Tours
format: eARC
buy/shelve it: Amazon | Goodreads
rating:
the blurb
“Moments define us. A split-second decision can shape your future, and you don’t realize it until it’s too late.”
Peyton Johnson:
The day I meet my boyfriend’s best friend, King; my king disappears. Everything’s fine when my gaming friend fades away like smoke because Theo consumes me entirely. Theodore Johnson becomes my husband, and our life is beautiful until it isn’t.
Theo’s gone and all that’s left of him is the unborn child in my stomach.
Silas King:The day I meet my best friend’s girl, my heart recognizes her as my Peyton. I loved her first, but that doesn’t matter. Theo’s the only family I’d ever known and compared to him, I’m ugly and scarred. Peyton’s king disappears because Theo is everything I’m not. He will make her happy. I think that will be enough for me to let go, but it isn’t.Then he dies, leaving her behind…
Until he comes back and I’m the only one that can see him.
Theodore Johnson:
The day I meet Peyton; my life is complete. I want to give her the world, but life doesn’t always work out that way. Now, I’m fog, slipping through her life without her knowing. Silas is the only one that knows I’m here, but it doesn’t matter. He’s going to steal her away. I can’t let him.
I loved her first, and forever will.
A romantic standalone with a ghostly twist!
a few notes
cover notes: so beautiful
keywords/phrases: death, grief, second chances, love
mood reading: in the mood for deep emotions
my review
This is a deeply emotional read, not for the faint of heart. There are moments of dark sadness, of fear and doubt, of love, of guilt, of despair. The author did an amazing job of making those moments very real, allowing the reader to become fully immersed in the story.
There are things in life that just aren’t black and white, no matter how much we want them to be. And this book highlights the reality that feelings are often complicated and tangled. The characters of Peyton, Theo, and Silas are flawed, certainly. But that’s what makes them real. They’ve made choices, for better or worse, for reasons that might not be entirely noble at times. And they’ve all paid the price for those choices. But in the end, it’s about how you live your life going forward, what you do going forward. That is the thrust of the story, and the reader gets to follow that journey in happiness, in sadness, in bittersweet joy.
There are moments when it could be easy to judge the characters for the choices they’ve made, but the author has drawn you into the story so much that you feel as if you understand the characters, understand their motivations. And that’s when it becomes obvious that some decisions just aren’t that perfect and easy to make.
Intense? Yes. Sad? Yes, at times. Was it worth it? Absolutely!
About Michelle Gross
Michelle is from a small town in Eastern Kentucky where possums try to blend in with the cats on the porch and bears are likely to chase your pets—this is very true, it happened with her sister’s dog. Despite the extra needed protection for your pets, she loves the mountains she calls home. She has a man and twin girls who are the light of her life and the reason she’s slightly crazy.
As a kid, she was that cousin, that friend, that sister and daughter, the talker who could spin a tale and make-believe into any little thing so it was no surprise when she found love in reading, and figured all these characters inside her head needed an outlet. They wanted to be heard, so she wrote.
The voices keep growing faster than she gets the time to write.
The stories are never going to end. That’s perfectly okay, though. We never want to stop an adventure.
She writes and loves many different genres so sign up to her mailing list to keep updated on her releases!
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Thanks for being on the tour! This sounds really emotional and well written! So happy you liked it!