Review: Steadfast by Sarina Bowen

Title: Steadfast
By: Sarina Bowen
Series: True North #2
My Copy: Ebook from Publisher
The BookWhisperer's Rating: 

She’s the only one who ever loved him—and the only one he can never have.

Jude lost everything one spring day when he crashed his car into an apple tree on the side of the road. A man is dead, and there's no way he can ever right that wrong. He’d steer clear of Colebury, Vermont forever if he could. But an ex-con in recovery for his drug addiction can’t find a job just anywhere.

For Sophie Haines, coming face to face with the man who broke her heart is gut-wrenching. Suddenly, he’s everywhere she turns. It’s hard not to stare at how much he’s changed. The bad boy who used to love her didn’t have big biceps and sun-kissed hair. And he’d never turn up volunteer in the church kitchen.

She knows it’s foolish to yearn for the man who returned all the heartsick letters she wrote him in prison. But the looks he sends her now speak volumes.

No one wants to see Sophie and Jude back together, least of all Sophie's police chief father. But it's a small town. And forbidden love is a law unto itself.

I need to admit that after finishing Bittersweet, I really didn’t want to read Jude’s story.  I thought he was an interesting character but I didn’t seem to think that much could come out of him and his past but I was SO WRONG! Not even a few pages in, I was hooked.  Jude’s backstory, his love for Sophie, the tragic way they parted, and now his arrival back in his home town had me more riveted than Griff and Audrey’s story. 

I don’t know if I can even express how much I loved this story.  If you just take Jude and break him down, he is the strongest character I have ever read about.  How he grew up with an alcoholic father and the horrible decisions that he made sent him to jail but in the end, it made him such a great person.  Even while battling his craving for drugs, Jude comes home to a town where he knows that he is not wanted because he has nowhere else to go.  He never blames others for his actions because he knows he made the first mistake of taking drugs and hiding his addiction.  Day in and day out he suffers quietly all while longing for Sophie but knowing that he is no longer worthy of her, that being with her would make it painful for the both of them.  And Sophie is just as strong, after the accident and loss of her brother, she lets go of her dreams and stays at home to take care of her mother.  But fate throws them together and things get electric!  This story isn’t just about Jude being reintroduced into society after serving his time and living with the consequences of his actions, it’s so much more.  I don’t want to say anything else because I want you to live it like I did while reading about these two beautiful characters.

Just go read it!