Before Us
by Jewel E Ann
I never saw him coming.
I didn’t know what would happen after my client found me sleeping in my car.
I’d been cleaning his house as his wife was dying.
I didn’t expect them to invite me to live with them.
I didn’t expect Suzie to become my lifeline—until she was gone.
I didn’t expect him to ask me to marry him when he found out I needed medical insurance.
I didn’t expect to fall in love with a grieving man.
There are so many reasons to keep my distance from Zach. Every tender moment secreted away.
When we’re not together, I miss the man I call husband.
Does he miss his wife? If so, which one?
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My Rating:
Favorite Quotes:
Strong people don’t always make the right decisions; they excel at moving on from the bad ones.
… when you walk into the room and she looks at you… the earth turns a little slower on its axis.
Like the ebb and flow of the ocean, the inhale and exhale of breath, life depends on the coexistence of holding on … and letting go. It’s how we navigate this life, mere children struggling to cross the monkey bars without falling.
Denial blurs good judgment almost as much as whiskey.
Kindness is the hardest thing to accept because it requires true vulnerability to feel it.
I swear I see my own soul in the depths of his eyes, storms chasing the sunset.
My Review:
I have the worst book hangover ever after working through all the feels of this one – oh my! Jewel E. Ann excels at breaking my heart and putting it back together, and she has accomplished this fete several times in each of her beautifully written stories. Her prose is profoundly poignant and heartbreaking, compelling, cleverly insightful, deliciously witty, and painfully perceptive.
Written from a dual POV I was quickly sucked into an addictive and angsty vortex and slotted into the thick of it, fully invested, completely immersed, and living within her characters’ skins while seeing through their eyes, and feeling their discomforts and shame when they struggled and failed, as all real people do. I am staggered by the agility and depth of her crafty storytelling and know it will take me some time to recover from the heady spell of her word voodoo. I’m reluctant to leave these characters behind.
Jewel is a Wall Street Journal & USA Today best-selling author with a quirky sense of humor. When she’s not saving the planet one tree at a time, you can find her role-modeling questionable behavior to her three boys, binge-watching Netflix with her husband, and writing mind-bending romance.