Lies, Hearts and Truths #2
Audible audiobook
Author: H. Hunting
Narrators: Andi Arndt and Zachary Webber
To the outsider looking in, Maverick Waters lives a perfect life: the son of a hockey legend, amazing family and friends, a future career in the NHL… but he carries the weight of the world in his shoulders. He blames himself for something horrible that happened to his sister years ago and he has been silently and selflessly making up for it since. While on vacation at the lake with friends and family he has the most unexpected meet-cute: a beautiful young woman, who fell asleep on her paddle board, floats all the way to the dock where he’s sitting. When he tries to wake her up she ends up pulling him into the water with her. They talk, he invites her to a party and they have an epic one-night-stand. Extremely taken with her but knowing nothing will come out of this, Maverick sneaks out, leaving her a note in one of his signature origami cranes. Summer is over, he’s back in college and – oh crap – his professor at his Creative Writing Course is Clover Sweet, AKA paddle board girl.
Clover took this job at the university because she wants to save some money and move permanently to her cabin. She’s been hiding from her mentally abusive, gaslighting husband of only six months who refuses to sign the divorce papers. To her surprise and chagrin, her unforgettable one-night-stand shows up in her class.
I really loved how this book overlaps in timeline with Little Lies and we get to see a lot of things that happened in that book though Mav’s POV. The age gap is not icky (Clover is 29, Maverick is 21) and nothing happens while he’s in her class.
We get to see how deeply the family was affected by what happened to his sister Lavender – the impact is deep in all their lives, especially Maverick’s. Maverick is a gentle soul, who puts everyone else before himself. There are times when his conversations with Clover sound like therapy, but I understand that it’s a way for us to get into his head.
As a teacher, I always have a hard time with student/teacher romances, but I was not weirded out by this one. I was cheering for them since he fell in the lake to help her. Great book!
Narration: Andi and Zach. Period. A million stars.
Rep and possible triggers: gay secondary character. Emotional abuse, gaslighting, harassment, extreme feelings of guilt, one scene of attempted sexual assault
