jennifer | offmyredcarpet's Reviews > What Could Have Been

Love Heather Guerre. Fun to read a small town romance set in the weeks preceding thanksgiving and into Xmas written in Guerre’s signature style. The title sounds foreboding but refers to time lost between the protagonists teenage years and their now 30+ selves.

This features something I really love in romance books which is the MMC laboring under the misapprehension that the FMC is who he thinks she is when in actuality she keeps her truth close to her chest. His slow realization and subsequent feeling like a jerk for his unfair assumption is just a *chefs kiss* favorite.

The FMC has come home to settle her grandmothers estate, having left after high school graduation and not returned since. There are those excited to see her and those who are not, the MMC being one of them. The consistent thread of those who are not a fan being she was an ungrateful granddaughter whose grandmother sacrificed everything to raise her.

She hires a construction company to do repairs to her grandmothers house to sell it and who owns the company? You guessed it, the MMC who slowly learns that what he thought about her couldn’t be further from the truth.

The home repair becomes a metaphor for healing for the FMC and reignites the spark between them from high school. It is an HEA (with spice!).

Check CW in the front of the book: emotional abuse at the hands of a guardian + difficulty from having undiagnosed ADHD and destructive behaviors that were associated with it are issues the protagonists struggle with.