Beneath the Stars by Emily McIntire (Jan 14, 2025) Thank you Libro.fm for the gifted advanced listening copy of this second chance romance!
Alina Carson and Chase Adams met as children when Chase and his sister Lily moved in down the street. Even at 11yo, Alina felt a pull toward Chase but became Lily’s best friend instead. Chase and Lily have had hard lives, abandoned by their mother and in and out of foster care. The Adams have finally offered them stability and family, but they still have a lot of complicated emotions about their past. Over the years, Alina and Chase grow closer, and by the time they’re in high school, years of friendship have grown into love, but when tragedy strikes, everything falls apart. Years later, Alina is still picking up the pieces of her life when Chase returns to their hometown, only to find that they’ll be working in close proximity. Can they put the hurt of the past behind them and rediscover the love and friendship that defined most of their lives?
This dual timeline, dual POV book is a slow-burn romance with a lot of complicated family and friendship dynamics, and it has a significant storyline about how addiction shapes both people and families. I enjoyed those elements, as well as the positive focus put on therapy and addiction support groups. Those are important. As for what tripped me up a little, I felt like starting their love story when she was eleven and he was thirteen was a little too young – I would have preferred a 13/14 age gap. We also spent a ton of the book on building trust between them as children, only to have a dramatic miscommunication that remained unclarified for almost a decade. When we returned to them as adults, I clicked more with the story. This is the first in a series originally released in 2020 and rereleased by Bloom, with new covers beginning this year. Despite my issues with some elements of this story, I am curious about what’s next for the secondary characters, and I’ll definitely explore the rest of the series.
🎧About the Audiobook🎧 Narrated by Liam DiCosimo and Brittany Pressley, the dual narration captures the story’s emotional core. Pressley, as always, delivers a flawless performance. However, I found DiCosimo’s portrayal of the FMC’s southern accent overly exaggerated, feeling more like a caricature than an authentic depiction. The audiobook runs 11 hours and 41 minutes.
Small town or big city? Why?
Book: 🌟🌟🌟💫
Audiobook: 🌟🌟🌟
Spice: 🌶️🌶️🌶️
Book Smart Kate 