After a horrific accident, late-night star Rhett Bryan makes his way back to Moonlight, SC. Summer Valentine is also there following a struggling music career, reluctantly allowing her son to get to know his father, Hunt McCroy. Summer has had a crush on her friend Rhett since they were kids, and now they begin to get to know each other again. With story shifts between present-day and the past, with each character replaying an event or chain of events that lead them back to their hometown in hopes of healing. But as the stories unfold, it seems that one fateful prom night changed everyone's path irrevocably. Told in three solidly different points of view, Talley's novel takes great care to examine the outcomes of the lives of Rhett, Summer, and Hunt. The author also painstakingly reconciles those outcomes; the internal debates are relevant and moving. Verdict While Talley's (All That Charm) latest features an overarching theme of unrequited love, there are some triggers that readers should be aware of, such as a death resulting from a car accident and a detailed date rape. Talley does an excellent job of making her flawed characters vastly more gray than black and white.which creates a story of unrequited lives, redeemed.-Frannie Strober Cassano, North Bellmore P.L., NY © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Talley (the Morning Glory series) packs her latest Southern romantic drama with a satisfying plot and appealing characters. Fifteen years after their high school prom, Summer Valentine, Rhett Bryan, and Hunt McCroy return to Moonlight, S.C., for very different reasons, and discover that they must confront the consequences of their youthful imprudence. Rhett's gleaming Hollywood life was disrupted when he accidentally ran over a young child. Summer has given up on a songwriting career and moved home so her teen son, David, can get to know his biological father, Hunt. An injury and subsequent painkiller addiction ended Hunt's baseball dreams, and now he's trying to make up for the years he spent ignoring David and hoping to make things right with Summer. Talley reveals detailed backstory by interweaving narratives from past and present. Themes of self-worth are examined through the lives of these complex characters as they reflect on their life experiences. Except for a few instances when the dialogue sounds a little too much like an authorial lecture, the prose is powerful in its understatedness, adding to the appeal of this alluring story. Agent: Michelle Grajkowski, 3 Seas Literary. (Apr.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.