Review: 4.5 Stars! :)
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 03 13, 2014
Salem Honeycutt makes a difference in the lives of a lot of boys in juvenile detention. Their burdens, their problems, their angers, their frustration – she could understand where it all came from, and how to combat it. But when it comes to her baby, Salem has no clue. You can feel the frustration, the hatred, the intense feeling of dread when she’s at home. My heart was aching badly, feeling for both mother and baby. I don’t blame her, there is a lot of undetected post partum depression cases around the world, only some would recognize it, and a few would ask for help. How can someone possibly understand the hatred mother has for her own child? It’s unthinkable, almost unheard of. But yes, it is happening. It is real.It’s ironic how a counselor who can help boys get out of their haze can’t help herself. No thanks to her husband who seemed to be more concern about himself rather than his wife and daughter. I was hoping, praying that she’d ask for help soon, before it becomes too late, before she collapses, before she does anything that she’d regret.And there’s Chris King – the one who changed her life, the one who gave light when she was on her darkest moment. She helped him, guided him, and motivated him to his full potential – never in her wildest dream that their paths would meet again. He was her client, she was her counselor – I thought it would never work. Reading the blurb – I wonder how Melanie Dawn would put things together without the both of them being inappropriate and unethical and well, without Salem sounding like a cougar.Chris King deserved his own HEA after experiencing a serious heartbreak from his first love. But walking away from her was one of his smartest decisions. It may have given him pain, but he was completely at peace with his decision. He was doing it for everyone’s peace of mind, and for the best. One concert lead him to a woman from his past who gave him hope during his lowest moment. Question is, would she see him as a man now?The story was flawless without a hint of inappropriateness, which I greatly appreciated. Chris and Salem were each other’s lifesavers during her time as a counselor, and it took more than a decade for them to meet again, this time he was already grown up, a popular star and on his way of becoming a music legend.I loved the fact that Chris didn’t forget Kaitlyn that easily, he still placed her in a special place in his heart, but he had moved on. She was his first love, the woman he had been in love with for a long period of time, and for him to completely transfer the feeling to a new person would just be unrealistic and unbelievable. Still, you wouldn’t feel that he loved Salem any less despite this fact. You can feel that he cared about her a lot, her importance in his life, and his love for both Salem and Alexa.More than just an ordinary love story, Then There Was You tackles a subject that most of us ignores, most of us could not understand and would label as a “normal phase” in a woman’s life. It highlighted the seriousness and possible consequences of post partum depression that can help readers fully understand what it is about.An emotion-filled novel, Melanie Dawn is finally giving Chris King his much sought-after HEA. My heart may have been aching reading half of the novel, but it didn’t make it less beautiful. It made me craved for both of their HEA, making this novel a real page-turner for me. Melanie Dawn grabbed my heart, squeezed it so tight I can’t barely breathe – but made it all worth it at the end. #MUSTREAD!★ARC Copy was given in exchange for an honest review.★