In a story about finding love through grief, Manda Mazanec has created a magnificent story, “A Rhode to Love.”
No matter how you lose someone, grief can be all consuming if you let it, but it can also be a flower; growing anew in the seed of your garden. You don’t just lose yourself when a person dies, you lose who you were with them. A part of you dies and you have to rediscover who you are as a whole.
That is one of the reasons I can relate to the main male character (MMC), Jamison, so much because I have lost a spouse, and you fall into this empty void and trying to find inspiration to live does not come easily. So, when you find it, you must hold onto it.
However, grief can come in different forms, and we each handle them in our own way. This story follows Violet and Jamison as they find who they are as a single person and as someone who wishes to find love again without the ones they loved most before.
Mazanec’s writing is flawless when it comes to the detail and pace of this story. It captivated me into sitting down and reading this book in almost one sitting. Work got in the way otherwise I would have done it.
Violet is a hospice nurse who loses her aunt to cancer, and it takes a huge toll on her. She stops traveling and living life to the fullest and dives deeper into her work to numb the pain. Completely isolating herself and denying herself true love when it comes to men.
So, when she breaks up with her boyfriend of the moment and loses another patient five years after her aunts passing it completely shatters her life. Her patient’s family is suing for wrongful death and for someone who puts her entire life into her work to make patients as comfortable as possible while they die, how much of you is left in the end?
Violet ends up taking the couples retreat trip that her boyfriend had paid for in order to get away to figure out her life. Little did she know that she would run into her one-night stand, Jamison, on this trip.
Romance author, Jamison, follows his sister and brother-in-law on their romantic bus getaway tours to find inspiration for his new books. He thought that watching different couples from afar would be enough to keep him distracted from his own pain. However, when his one-night stand walks onto the bus everything changes.
Mazanec did an outstanding job keeping this a closed-door romance while also being a forced proximity. It added a layer of spice that sparked the fire between these two characters.
It is funny, heartbreaking, bittersweet and everything I was looking for in a romance novel.
One of my favorite quotes from Jamison is “I can’t help it. There’s something unequivocally beautiful about her when she’s flustered. Maybe it’s because she’s usually so bold. SO unreserved. And this small hint of vulnerability feels like an accidental secret she’s let slip. A secret I want to uncover.”
However, no matter how into Violet, Jamison is, she can’t seem to let her guard down enough to let him in. Will she finally leave the grief behind and allow the one thing she has been missing in her life to happen or will she run away from happiness all together?
Overall, this book had everything I was looking for and made me look at my own self and the grief that has consumed my life. I never expected to see myself inside a romance character as vividly as I did this one. My heart aches for these two and it is because of this that I am rating this book four out of five stars and because of the spicy dance scene and the closed-door forced proximity that I am rating it three out of five chili peppers.
Thank you, Manda Mazanec, for the ARC (Advanced Ready Copy) and allowing me to review this book for you.
🌶️ 🌶️🌶️/ 🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️
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