America Mason, a sassy undergrad at Eastern State University, is in love with a Maddox–Shepley Maddox. Unlike his cousins, Shepley is more lover than fighter, but a road trip to her parents’ home in Wichita, Kansas could mean the next step, or the end of everything.

My Thoughts

We all loved America from the main story – and i think that it’s about time that we got to see a bit more of how she and Shep got together and what that would mean for them in the future.  What we get here is a little snippet that jumps through time a bit so that we can see where it all started, where it progressed, and then where it netted out.

There are bits and pieces here that are great – you get to see that initial meeting on campus when they were freshmen, but none of the drama that ensued. It’s nice to see how uncertain Shep was and how sure of herself America was.  That’s what we felt from the bigger story and that’s nice to see it run true here.

Then we get to see how things were a year later when Abby and Travis got married -and what that meant to how their own relationship would progress.  It’s nice to get the view here since in the bigger story, we only saw the break up situation once with this happy-ish couple, and it’s nice to see that there was maybe something less than rosey going on in how they wanted to approach things.

Then we get another jump ahead that’s about 3 years into the future to see how things are going, and we see that there’s been a bit of stagnation or rocky-ness going on.  It really humanizes the characters here and makes you wonder what’s going to happen since everything is uncertain.

Bring in a bit of weather terror, tornadoes ,couples drifting apart, and destruction leading to hospitals.  I feel like it’s an expected path where they went, but one that maybe helped find the right resolution since they honestly didn’t know.

What we get in the ending is a culmination of sorts for each person on their own.  Abby, America, Travis and Shep.  We see where they ended up at the end of this journey – and while i know that there’s plenty of content here waiting for the stories to continue with all the maddoxes, i feel like at least we know where these 4 ended up.  On that note – a quick read for sure and you guys should check it out.

Our lovely author has done it again with giving us just enough with the characters that we love, enough emotional investment to keep it going, anxiety and well, the expected and very unexpected ending.