ONE LOVE STORY. TWO MARRIAGES. THREE VERSIONS OF THE TRUTH.

Skye Starling is overjoyed when her boyfriend, Burke Michaels, proposes after a whirlwind courtship. Though Skye seems to have the world at her fingertips―she’s smart, beautiful, and from a well-off family―she’s also battled crippling OCD ever since her mother’s death when she was eleven, and her romantic relationships have suffered as a result.

But now Burke―handsome, older, and more emotionally mature than any man she’s met before―says he wants her. Forever. Except, Burke isn’t who he claims to be. And interspersed letters to his therapist reveal the truth: he’s happily married, and using Skye for his own, deceptive ends.

In a third perspective, set thirty years earlier, a scrappy seventeen-year-old named Heather is determined to end things with Burke, a local bad boy, and make a better life for herself in New York City. But can her adolescent love stay firmly in her past―or will he find his way into her future?

On a collision course she doesn’t see coming, Skye throws herself into wedding planning, as Burke’s scheme grows ever more twisted. But of course, even the best laid plans can go astray. And just when you think you know where this story is going, you’ll discover that there’s more than one way to spin the truth.

I’ve had this book forever and finally made time to read it. I read Lovering’s Bye, Baby a while back and really enjoyed it. That one was messy and complicated and didn’t lean on a bunch of dumbass twists to keep the story moving. This one is mostly cut from the same cloth. Complicated people. Messy lives. Unfortunate situations. He said/she said cranked up to the max.

Skye Starling is in love. Her boyfriend Burke has just proposed, and from the outside, everything looks great. She’s bright, gorgeous, and has the kind of family money that leaves on wanting for nothing. Burke is older than her, calm, emotionally available, the kind of guy that feels like a real grown-up after a string of partners that haven’t worked out. There’s also a piece of Skye’s story you learn early. She lost her mom when she was eleven, and ever since, she’s been dealing with crippling OCD that has gotten in the way of every relationship she’s tried to have. Burke seems like the one who can handle it. But Burke isn’t telling Skye the truth about who he is, and the book makes that clear pretty early on. There are also chapters from thirty years back following a teenage girl named Heather, who is trying to outgrow her hometown and the wrong-side-of-town boy she keeps tangling with. As you can probably guess, those two timelines aren’t unrelated.

I thought the characters were really strong across the board. There were a couple I never fully trusted, and that always makes for a fun read. You spend the whole book trying to figure out which version of a person is the real version, and the book uses that uncertainty really well. Skye, in particular, is probably the most complex, and the author treats her as more than just a victim. Burke is a piece of work, and the letters to his therapist were one of my favorite structural choices because they show you exactly how a person justifies the indefensible.

The story itself is fun, and I liked the format, but it started to lose steam in the second half. There’s a moment about halfway through where something happens that flips a switch, and from that point on the story gets a little repetitive and predictable. The tension that had been so well managed in the first half started feeling more like the same beat played over and over.

I also wasn’t crazy about how the whole thing wrapped up. Some of these characters made choices throughout the book that I thought were way too messy and they didn’t deserve the neat and tidy that they got. I wanted more consequence. I wanted the people who did the most damage to feel it. The ending softens that for everybody, and it took some of the punch out of what came before.

That said, even with my issues, I still had a decent time with this book. The writing is sharp and the structure is satisfying. The characters are people I won’t be forgetting anytime soon, even the ones I wanted to throttle. Lovering is good at writing people who feel real, and that part of this book worked even when the plot stopped working as hard.

If you like messy people, complicated relationships, and stories where you’re never quite sure who to trust, this is worth your time. Just know going in that the first half is doing the heavy lifting and the back half doesn’t quite stick the landing. I’d still recommend it. I just wouldn’t put it at the top of the stack.

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