The Forever Girl: A Novel

The Forever Girl is a detailed dramatic tale of a surrogate family separated by tragedy and their road to forever. Caitlen and her family took in foster kids. The final three were Heather, Maze and Walker. They were together a year but a year was long enough to make them family, something the three definitely needed. And then it was gone. Years have past. There were times they were sort of together. There were times of avoidance. Caitlen wants her "family" back and she has no problem guilting them into staying for a week before her wedding. The Forever Girl might be fiction but it is fiction riddled with lessons. This is a story of discovery. This is a story of acceptance. This is a story maturity. This is a story confession and growth. All of a sudden I'm sorry is enough to bring them together as a family. This is a story of a relationship, a romance finally coming to fruition. 1/12/21 The advantage of living on the west coast is releases show on my kindle at 9 pm. Loved my bedtime story.

Jill Shalvis has a way of writing that pulls you in and engages you in the story from the outset and The Forever Girl was no exception. This book touched on so many different things from family, family of the heart, friends, second chances, love and forgiveness and it was definitely not short on emotion, humor or heart. Maze has come back to Wildstone for her friend Caitlin's (Cat) wedding and in the process, she reunites with the other two, Heather and Walker, who as teenagers made up the foursome that spent so much time together and were bonded by both wonderful memories and hardships. While the four of them have been apart for many years, when they find themselves under one roof again, many things revert back to "normal" pretty quickly, while there are other things that time has changed about each of them causing some issues and bringing things to the surface that weren't dealt with years before. Will they be able to re-establish the connections that they once shared or has time separated them too much? You really get a bit of everything with this book; romance, friendship and family. Each of the characters, along with the secondary characters, are well defined, so you find yourself rooting for each of them to end up exactly where they are supposed to be. This is another fantastic addition to the Wildstone series!

This story carried considerably more angst than any Jill Shalvis book I’ve ever read. Not that I’ve read a lot of them, but it was a noticeable difference when contrasted with the brilliance of her previous works that I’ve been lucky enough to lay my greedy and grubby hands on. The majority of said angst radiated out of the main character of Maze, who was difficult for me to warm up to as Maze took stubbornness to a new level of tenacious obstinance. I grew to care for her, although I still wanted to periodically give her a few smacks with my Kindle to disrupt her egocentrism. As always, Ms. Shalvis’s writing was easy to follow, cleverly nuanced, well-paced, and amusingly engaging with a compelling cast of complex and quirky characters. The storylines and issues combated were relevant and relatable to many regardless of family situation, as every family unit has at least a few obnoxious members if not an entire limb on the family tree, or as in the case of mine, riddled with a plethora of pervasive pestilence starting from the root level and extending to the very top leaf. ;-)