"Sometimes love is right in front of you"
Reviewed by Sandra Wurman
Posted June 10, 2022
Women's Fiction
Anyone knows a pact to be just friends is pretty much doomed from the very outset. However it does provide some wonderfully engaging moments in a story. Jill Shalvis decided to give this a try – being just friends in THE FRIENDSHIP PACT which proves to be one of her best – and that is saying a lot. You can’t help falling in love with THE FRIENDSHIP PACT.
Riggs has a bad track record keeping the people he loved in his life. So it was safer to avoid the love part.
And then there is Tae who never lets her guard down enough to find the affection she so dearly yearns for. Bad choice for a couple but Jill Shalvis is up to the challenge.
April spent her life finding ways to support her daughter Tae which has made them, much to her regret, rather co-dependent. Having a child when you aren’t much older than one is a life altering event. April was doing it on her own. No support group – no easy solutions.
Everyone has scars. Mostly those that aren’t apparent or well hidden, either by deflection or indifference. Riggs and his brother Jake spent years avoiding being the physical target of their father’s drunken violence. They lived in a war zone and then each joined the military. Which provided a family of sorts but didn’t remove them from the dangers of violence.
April is starting to feel like her life is settling now that Tae is an adult with a lovely career. April loves to lose herself in her photography. It is something that displays her emotions and talents in a way that she never could do on her own. Behind the lens of her camera, she is growing. April has never met a spider she didn’t like. You get the picture.
Being reunited with her childhood friend, Riggs, Tae is tempted to see if this relationship could now mature into something more. But Riggs is determined to keep those boundaries alive and well. He isn’t willing to trust losing another person he loves. So friendship is all he is willing to give. Tae would like more but acknowledges that friendship is probably better than nothing. This would of course fit her history with people, men in particular.
So Tae and Riggs agree to a friend’s pact for the next three months he will be around helping his brother Jake with organized event at Adrenaline HQ, a place for those with limitations to gain some measure of independence and hopefully joy. The deal is sealed with a pinkie promise. Remember those.
See that’s the thing with Jill Shalvis, she surprises you at every word, dialog, sigh, and scene. She’s real, her folks are real, and the situations jump straight out of life. Rather than bog you down with harsh realities, Jill Shalvis sets out to prove there is a rainbow of sorts at the end of every storm. You just have to look for it. For Tae that is still an issue as she is a WIP. Oh BTW catch-up on your alphabetic shortcuts.
Jake has found a place where he is happy and is doing well within his own physical limitations. He has found love. Bringing Riggs home and working together at Adrenaline HQ, he hopes to reconnect with the brother he adores. When Jakes says I love you, Riggs replies - back at you. Jake is holding out for more and we can only root for them both.
Jill Shalvis has amassed an interesting diverse cast of characters in THE FRIENDSHIP PACT, who will in short order be on your best-ever list. Haven’t met a book by this talented author that hasn’t touched deep inside. Jill Shalvis loves people and dogs. That’s why I seek out everything she writes. Enjoy.
SUMMARY
Alone in the world, Tae Holmes and her mother April pretty much raised each other, but as Tae starts asking questions about the father she’s never met, April, for the first time in her life, goes silent. To make matters worse, Tae is dangerously close to broke and just manages to avoid financial meltdown when she lands a shiny new contract with an adventure company for athletes with disabilities and wounded warriors.
Her first big fundraiser event falls flat, but what starts out as a terrible, horrible, no-good night turns into something else entirely when Tae finds herself face-to-face with Riggs Copeland. She hasn’t seen the former Marine since their brief fling in high school, and while still intensely drawn to him, she likes her past burned and buried, thank you very much. Hence their friendship pact.
But when April oddly refuses to help Tae track down her father, it’s Riggs who unexpectedly comes to her aid. On a hunt to unlock the past, the two of them find themselves on a wild ride and learn a shocking truth, while also reluctantly bonding in a way neither had seen coming. Now Tae must decide whether she’s going to choose love … or walk away from her own happiness.
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