"Only Love Can Hurt Like This" by Paige Toon

 

Only Love Can Hurt Like This by Paige Toon

Submitted by Heather Groom, Sullivan Gardens Public Library Branch Manager

"Even while Toon was breaking my heart into tiny pieces, I couldn't put it down."-Jill Santopolo, author of  The Light We Lost.

    Paige Toon has crafted the perfect Summer Romance with her new book "Only Love Can Hurt Like This". Main character Wren has just found out that her fiancé is in love with another woman. Or so he says in an awkward, hurried conversation that brought up more questions than it answered. Devastated and alone in Bury St. Edmunds, UK, she pulls together what is left of her life and moves back to her hometown of Indianapolis, IN. Surrounded by her family, she searches for solid ground with the community and home she grew up in.

    It wouldn't be a story if it ended there, of course! Wren tries to focus on her career, her family, and anything that will keep her mind off of the train wreck engagement she left behind. (Would anyone like to spend a summer renovating a classic AirStream RV?) Then, on a hot summer night, she runs into (almost quite literally) Anders, a neighbor with a mysterious past who confounds Wren as much as he intrigues her. Their feelings of frustration soon turn to friendship, and then much more. But Anders has a past that he can't outrun, and obligations that Wren could never see coming. Love is never easy....but should it be this hard?

    Toon has created characters as organic as the soil they grow their lives upon. This book is a love story, plain and simple. But the family units that surround Wren and Anders are the heart of this story. They have sketchy pasts, and pains that have fermented in their psyches for too long. Regardless, they love each other in the best ways they know how. They bring out the best in each other, even if that person has forgotten pieces of themselves along the way. Each character has a wholly satisfying arc, and Toon hasn't left anyone in the shadows by the time the last page is turned.

    This book is a tear jerker, but that makes it all the more satisfying by the time the story closes. This is a heart warming, quick read that will tempt you to read it just one more time.