Review: Until There Was You – Kristan Higgins

Until There Was You by Kristan Higgins
Series:
Release Date:  October 25, 2011
Publisher:   HQN Books
Page Count:  384
Source:  NetGalley

She’s having serious prom-night déjà vu…

Posey Osterhagen can’t complain. She owns a successful architectural salvaging company, she’s surrounded by her lovable, if off-center, family and she has a boyfriend—sort of. Still, something’s missing. Something tall, brooding and criminally good-looking… something like Liam Murphy.

When Posey was sixteen, the bad boy of Bellsford, New Hampshire, broke her heart. But now he’s back, sending Posey’s traitorous schoolgirl heart into overdrive once again. She should be giving him a wide berth, but it seems fate has other ideas

Remember that crush you had on the “God” of your high school?  You’d doodle his name on your notebook, you’d doodle your name and his name together “just to see what it’d be like” and know that if he ever looked in your direction or heaven forbid said something to you, you could die a happy person.

That was Posey Osterhagen’s life when she was sixteen and in love with local bad boy, Liam Declan Murphy.  She would sneak glances at him every chance she had, whether at school or as he worked at her parents restaurant.  She just knew he was the one.  But the one ended being the guiding hand in the humiliation and heartbreak that changed Posey after a disastrous date at the prom.

Fifteen years later, Posey’s still living in Bellsford running her own business (architectural salvaging).  She’s still single, but happy with where she is in her life.  She’s got her parents, her best friends, brother and her animals to keep her entertained.  Sure, it gets lonely at 2:47 in the morning, but she wasn’t going to complain.

Then she came face to face with Liam, who has returned to Bellford to make a fresh start with his teenage daughter.  Suddenly she was that sixteen year old girl again, tongue tied around the one person who’s mere presence did things to her.

As with most of Kristan Higgins characters, you absolutely fall in love with them…faults and all.  Unlike her other heros, Liam has a whole boat load of issues that make you love him all that much more.  His wife, whom he loved since high school, died leaving him with doubts about his mortality and his role as a parent.  He’s developed OCD because of his inability to deal with everything and suffers from panic attacks.  All things you wouldn’t expect from the big, bulking alpha male who rides motorcycles and scares people with just his scowl.  But it’s because of all those faults that we love him and want to steal him.

You love Posey too (even though you do hate her a bit for having the type of metabolism that allows her to eat whatever she wants while struggling to put on weight).  She struggles, just like the rest of us, in trying to let go of some her insecurities and be who she is, despite the overbearing mother and bitch of a cousin who has it out for her.

The cast of secondary characters are great and really give us a good idea of what shaped Posey into the person she is today.  The gym teacher best friend who has boundary issues with her son, her best friend home ec teacher who’s married to her clueless brother (unless there’s an amputation…then he’s not clueless) and then her parents and their kitchy german restaurant.

A wonderful, laugh out loud, heart warming story that shows us sometimes we can get that untouchable bad, boy…it just might take a while.