Alternate Endings by Brittany Anne

Alternate Endings by Brittany Anne
on July 25, 2019
Genres: Fiction / Romance / General, Fiction / Romance / New Adult
Pages: 194
Goodreads

They both want to run, but they want each other more. Charlotte was not living the life she'd dreamed of. Dead end job, tiny apartment, no family left, and forever trapped in the small town where she lost it all... that was her life, until the man she'd spent ten years working to forget walks in as if he'd never left. Owen ignites her like no one else, but can she really trust him again? Charlotte had been burned by him before, and she knows in her heart that she will not survive saying goodbye a second time... When she looks at him, does she see the man she loved, or the man she left?Owen worked hard to build a life for himself in the Navy, but ten years later, fate calls him back to the little town where he lost everything. When he sees the woman he'd spent a decade running from, he finds himself at war in his own mind. Sparks begin flying, and he finds the wall he built around his heart slowly crumbling down. He wants to forget the past, but he doesn't know how to see beyond her betrayal... or trust that she won't do it again. Can true love really get a second chance, or was their romance always doomed to end in tragedy?

Alternate Endings by Brittany Anne is a contemporary romance with a second chance trope. I think this book is fairly well written. Ms. Anne does a good job of giving her characters depth. Each has past hurts and responds to life and each other through those shaded glasses.The heroine Charlotte McKinley is often confusing. She’s wearing a mask of sorts to try to survive her day to day life. She allows herself to be seduced and used over and over again, but then questions the depth of her relationship with her seducer. Is she questioning who she actually is or who she is with her hero? I did think there was too much sex in the book. The characters use each other shamelessly. Sex is about as important to their relationship as eating a bowl of nachos with extra cheese. I liked Owen the hero. Trauma has shaped him, and I think Ms. Anne does a good job of keeping Owen’s character consistent with that past pain. “He looked bigger in every way…taller, wider, stronger. Muscles were erupting from beneath his shirt, and not the lean ones he’d had when they were young. These were not the kind of muscles that somebody just had. These were the kind of muscles that somebody spent years building, molding, and crafting to perfection. His once clean-shaven chin had grown harder and firmer and was covered in dark stubble. It wasn’t just his chin that was harder; his whole face was. His once warm eyes now looked like ice.” The pace was good. I was able to read this book in one day. I was given a copy of this book.