I’m struggling to see how this formed a series as each of the books stands on their own. Yes, there’s some crossover characters, but the relevance to the story is really not important. That aside, this was another cute romance though it took a while to get going.
The story centres around sixteen year old Hadley, a dedicated swimmer, and her growing relationship with Jackson, who infuriated her but we can see it’s because he challenges her in a way others don’t and sees her for what she is. So, the relationship between these two is important and there plenty of ups and downs along the way but we can see just how compatible they are and watch to see how long until they realise it.
Hadley is focused, almost scarily so, and while I liked seeing her developing relationship with Jackson I felt that West was trying to do too many things by making her primary focus the relationship Hadley has with her parents. From the outset we can see that her relationship with mum and dad is skewed by the fact that they are still mourning her brother. She does so much but doesn’t seem to realise most of it is about trying to get the attention of her parents. If it’s so obvious to us and her friends then I wonder why it wasn’t the aspect of the book that West focused on more.
I completely get that behind the whole fake Heath Hall quest is the need for Hadley to recognise what’s holding her back. She knows it, but boy does it take her a long time to get round to working out how to face it!