Lily swears she’ll never end up in another abusive home, but when Ryle starts to show all the same warning signs that her mother ignored, Lily learns just how hard it is to say goodbye. The provocative opening takes a dark turn when Lily receives a warning about Ryle’s intentions from his sister, who becomes Lily’s employee and close friend. They meet on a rooftop in Boston on the night Ryle loses a patient and Lily attends her abusive father’s funeral.

Hoover’s ( November 9, 2015, etc.) latest tackles the difficult subject of domestic violence with romantic tenderness and emotional heft.Īt first glance, the couple is edgy but cute: Lily Bloom runs a flower shop for people who hate flowers Ryle Kincaid is a surgeon who says he never wants to get married or have kids. Hibbert centers the diversity of the English experience, avoiding both the posh and the twee.Ī revelation. Even better, Chloe is surrounded by a family of remarkable, glamorous women, including two sisters who will be featured in later installments.

Red is as charming, sexy, and vulnerable as can be, but Chloe steals the show with her sarcasm, wit, and eccentric coping mechanisms. The plot sounds heavy, and Hibbert certainly writes authentic moments of physical and emotional pain, but this is an incredibly funny, romantic, and uplifting book. With alternating points of view, Hibbert ( That Kind of Guy, 2019, etc.) portrays how their relationship helps Red recover from intimate partner violence and helps Chloe stop allowing her fibromyalgia to steal her happiness. After they join forces for a side-splittingly funny cat rescue, Chloe agrees to exchange her website design services for Red’s tolerance of her illicit furry roommate, and a friendship is born.

As a coping strategy for her chronic pain and exhaustion, Chloe has become, in her words, “a socially inept control freak.” Despite himself, Red is deeply attracted to Chloe’s gleaming brown skin and rococo beauty. When he catches snobbish and prickly tenant Chloe Brown surreptitiously watching him, he doesn’t realize that she admires his lanky ginger looks as well as his vitality and easygoing charm. Once a promising artist, Red’s self-esteem hasn’t fully recovered, so he paints at night in private. When computer geek Chloe realizes she has allowed her chronic illness to shrink her world, she creates a list of risky adventures that her building superintendent, a hunky artist, is all too happy to share.Īfter ending an abusive relationship with a London socialite, Redford Morgan has taken refuge in a nearby city, working as a super in his best mate’s building.

Talia hibbert brown sisters