BB’s Review: Just the Way You Are by Barbara Freethy
Just the Way You Are by Barbara Freethy
“A fresh and exciting new voice.” Susan Elizabeth Phillips
“Freethy will keep readers hooked.” Publishers’ Weekly
From the back cover: Take a romantic journey with Barbara Freethy to Tucker’s Landing, Oregon, where Sam and Alli Tucker have made a life together…a life about to be tested by the return of the only woman who can break them up…Alli’s sister, Tessa.
A baby brought them together–and even though Alli has always loved her strong, sexy husband Sam and the life they’ve made together, she’s now decided to set him free to follow his youthful dreams. For although she worships Sam, it’s no longer enough for her to be wife and lover when she knows she holds so little of his heart.
Sam has always dreamed of a life away from the close-knit world of Tucker’s Landing, but marriage and fatherhood ended all that. Now Sam is torn between what was and what was meant to be. He must decide if it’s time to rekindle the dreams of the past…or accept Alli, and her love, just the way she is.
This is a wonderful emotional story I breezed through because I wanted to see how it would end. It kept my interest all the way through. As a teenager, our heroine Alli fell in love with her sister Tessa’s boyfriend the first moment she saw him. Sam Tucker was tall, dark tanned and handsome and, of course, very much in love with her beautiful sister Tessa. Sam was going to ask Tessa to marry him at Christmas that year, but Tessa was given a modeling contract and jetted off to model instead of going home for Christmas that year. Sam was crushed and brokenhearted. He went to a party and got very drunk…Alli was there too. She saw what her sister had done to Sam and wanted to show him how much she cared. Well, that night they made a baby together and changed all three of their lives at that moment. It broke Tessa’s and Alli’s relationship into a million pieces. Sam did the right thing and married Alli to provide a life for her and the baby. They had a beautiful daughter who Sam adores. Eight years later Alli’s grandmother, who raised them after their parents accident, had a stroke. Tessa came home. Then the “stuff” hits the fan. Alli doesn’t want to see her sister. All these years she’s felt guilty for what she did. She knows that Sam really loved Tessa and would have ended up with her had Alli not been pregnant. So, though she loves Sam more than anything in the world, she wants to finally do what’s right…she’s letting Sam go. She’s giving him his freedom to pursue life…and Tessa. It breaks her heart, but she can’t go on knowing all her life she’ll always be number two in Sam’s heart. Sam never told her he loved her. She knew it was time to let him finally be happy. It’s a heart wrenching story and written very well. You actually can see both sides of the story…I would have killed my sister if she got pregnant from my boyfriend…but…it takes two to tango and I guess that means I should kill him too!!! Well, I actually wouldn’t kill them…maybe just make a dart board with their faces on it and go to town throwing darts…okay, so I’m immature. On the other hand, if I fell deeply in love with my sister’s boyfriend and saw her ditch him and break his heart…what would I do to make him feel better…hmmmm. You don’t know who Sam will pick…the life he wanted, or the life he was forced into. There’s a whole lot more story between these pages and you’ll love them.
Because this story had me torn between both the sister’s sides, I give this story 3 cocktails.
Tags: Barbara Freethy, book, Book Reviews
