Review: Finally! You can't help but love Chris King.
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 03 9, 2014
The ending of SO MUCH IT HURTS made me want to hurt someone.  Talk about heart wrenching, gut crushing disappointment – at least from Chris King’s point of view. Yes, he made some really horrendous decisions, but he deserves happiness as much as the next guy. Thank the Lord above for THEN THERE WAS YOU. *sigh*So, Kaitlyn and Chris did the horizontal tango when they clearly shouldn’t have in So Much It Hurts.It is entirely possible that their little “no regrets” weekend produced a tiny person, and at the end of the first book in this series, Chris bumps into Kaitlyn, and her two children, years later at the supermarket. It’s then that he realizes one of them might be his. Yikes!  Talk about a slap in the face. Then again, what was she supposed to say? Oh, hey Chris, I had a son a few years ago after our weekend together and he may or may not be yours? Talk about an uncomfortable situation.  Needless to say, that kind of threw Chris for a loop, and after setting up a trust fund for the boys he walked away…into bottles of alcohol and random panties. He was on a one way trip to rock bottom until a familiar face from his very distant past showed up in an unlikely place."I would never forget the woman who picked up the pieces of my shattered heart and helped me mend them back together one piece at a time. She encouraged me to go after my dreams, sat by me in my darkest moments, and was there for me when I needed someone most. I loved her for everything she was to me."Salem Honeycutt was Chris’s juvenile detention center counselor. She was 24 to his 17, a wife and mother suffering from post-partum depression. Helping the boys at Fairbanks kept Salem going; they gave her purpose in an otherwise bleak existence. Chris needed Salem and Salem needed Chris.  They shared a bond which was severed the moment he stepped outside the walls of juvie. She never thought she’d see him again; backstage passes fixed that…Let me make something clear.  Nothing inappropriate occurs between Chris and Salem when he’s serving his sentence at Fairbanks.  They just seemed to click. Years later when they meet again, the sparks fly.  Things have changed. Chris is a grown man, no longer a young teenaged boy. The situation flirts with the inappropriate but doesn’t quite cross the line.Then There Was You is told in much the same way that So Much It Hurts was; about half the book is set in the past and the other half the present.  Usually this kind of thing drives me up a wall, but having the back story on Salem and Chris (much like Kaitlyn and Chris) made all the difference.I could literally feel Salem’s pain. I myself suffered through some of the feelings she did when I became a mom.  It’s not easy to take care of a brand new life, especially when you’re basically doing it on your own.  Reading about her struggles gave me a healthy respect for her character.  She and Chris were both suffering in very different yet similar ways."He was a lost and broken teenager who just needed someone to understand him – to really hear him. I was a hollow shell of a person who just needed a beacon of hope, a possibility for something positive.  Together we complemented each other’s needs."Warning: Chris is a rock star.  He finds himself in some pretty crappy situations. Remember that while you read this book. He’s not perfect, but his heart is always in the right place. Don’t give up on him before he’s had his chance to shine.I love Melanie.  I love how she writes, the pace of her stories, the character development – I love it all.  I can’t wait to see what she comes out with next.  This series has completely blown me away. It’s beautifully devastating.  Melanie takes you places you never wanted to go, but she doesn’t leave you there for long. If you hold out long enough, hope finds its way through despair.