Title: 400 First Kisses
Author:  E.L. Todd
Publisher/Year:  CreateSpace Publishing 9/13/17
Length:  270 Pages
Series:  First #1

Overview

The man I hate lives next door.

He must have just moved in, even though I never saw the moving truck.

He’s just as arrogant as I remember, mowing the lawn without a shirt and grinning like an idiot. When he catches me staring at him through the window, he winks.

So cocky.

He flirts with me like he never broke my heart.

And then he tells me something I just can’t believe.

We’re married.

My Thoughts

The title should have given the impression that this was going to be like 50 First Dates, but i sadly didn’t pick up on that at first. It took me about 2 chapters to get into realizing this and then it all made sense. What we have here is a story that actually breaks my heart. We have Bree – our main character who we come to learn was hit by a car about 18 months prior and every day resets for her. She’s not able to remember anything that happens from the day prior and iit’s the same thing everyday, although some days are good and some are not.

She has the love and support of her sister Amelia, her friends Blade and Ace (great names huh?) and her sexy neighbor Cypress – who we quickly learn is her ex-boyfriend who cheated on her and…..her husband. It’s a dynamic that’s more painful than you can imagine for sooo many different reasons.

Every day, when Bree sees him, all she remembers is the day that she walked in on him cheating on her. What she doesn’t remember is how he fought to win her back and how he succeeded and they had the kind of love you only read about or see in movies. They were happy and then the accident happened and they weren’t. Cypress on the other hand is SO devoted to her that he moved next store, suffers through the replay of every day because he’s beyond in love with her. he needs her in order to survive and it makes you really want to love him.

When Bree falls and hits her head, things change in an instant. She’s able to remember past one day – she’s able to reengage with the world and she’s able to get her life back. the problem though is that even with her friends and family telling her how happy she was in her marriage, she can’t get past her last memory. She doesn’t remember at all that he won her back and that he’s a changed man, and it seems like it’s a losing battle. We spend the entirety of this book watching him do his best work to get another shot with her.

There’s also as secondary story in here – with Amelia at the center. She’s Bree’s sister, she’s divorced and she has two young girls. She’s also got a crush on Ace that’s making their friendship complicated. We watch these two dance around each other, we watch Ace truly be the amazing guy that we want for her, and for her girls, but we also watch him tell her that he’s not ready to settle down. So it’s really a roller coaster of small wins and big losses with them.

Where we net out in the end of this fist book is a place where we have no answers. We don’t know which couples will be together and we don’t know the factors that will get them to a better place all around. It’s so sad to watch since there’s more struggle than moments of happiness in this one. I can’t wait to see what the next installment brings for us. On that note – ENJOY!