Toronto Terror #5

ARC provided by author

Author: Helena Hunting

OMG, this one claimed me! We’ve been waiting for Conor’s book since he started showing up (let’s face it, we all love a bad boy and we get a broken bad boy… phew!). Connor has been the bad boy of hockey since forever and the odd man out in his picture perfect, rich as sin family. The only person who gets him is his Meems. 

Mildred ‘Dred’ Reformer has also lived her entire life on the sidelines. Orphaned at three, she bounced from foster home to foster home until she aged out. She got her degree and her Master’s and works at the library, where she commands several programs for the underprivileged, and she found a family with the BBBs and her best friend, Flip (Connor’s nemesis). 

They’ve been around each other because of the Terror and them attending little  Callie’s games. When Connor finds out Meems loves Dred because she’s the librarian who helps her pick up books. Meems health is failing and Connor can’t fathom life without his grandma. So he decides to grant her wish of settling down and getting married. The perfect opportunity happens when he offers Dred a way out off a situation if she just says ‘I do.”

I absolutely loved this book and devoured it in one sitting! We’ve been learning that Connor is not the villain he has been cast as. Dred is the best friend you want for yourself. Their romance is complicated, especially because Connor only knows rejection and truly believes he’s not worthy of love but it’s ever so swoony. 

As in all Helena’s books, the whole ‘gang’ is present – the BBBs, the Terrors,  and they all band together to protect their own. They do it for Dred. Now Connor just needs to let them do it for him too. 

We have a cute little pet, little girls with crushes, a Disney villain father, love declarations in all love languages, sandwich jokes, getting the family you wanted and becoming the person you were always meant to be. 

A thousand stars! 

Note: Kudos to Flip for being a true best friend and not a nincompoop! (IYKYK) LOL

Content notes (including but not limited to): mentions of living in foster care, death of parents, financial insecurity, food insecurity, ailing family member, cheating (not MCs), toxic relationship with family members