As soon as I read the synopsis, I was kind of hooked to it despite the trope not being my go-to one. And I'm glad I did it because I quite enjoyed this book!

Arden, as you can tell from the synopsis, has been through a lot. Her life hasn't been easy, which has shaped her the way she is, cold, distant and a little insecure. One day things in Arden's life get so tough that she finds herself driving without a destination, not wanting to go back home. Soon she runs out of gas and has no money on her that's when she meets Henry, who lends her a helping hand. There are sparks alright, but fate has some other things planned, she meets with a terrible accident from which Henry rescues her. A year later, after having no contact with Henry, she sees him standing in front of her in the school corridor and the last thing she imagined happens, he turns out to be her teacher.

The last thing Henry too expected was to see her again and to see that she's so hurt and closed off and not happy in her life. Henry just wants to help her in any way he can. He listens to her without any judgement. Henry was amazing with her, he was calm, patient, and understanding. But I felt a bit detached from Henry in the second half. There were moments where you could clearly see that Henry liked Arden, but because of some circumstances he backs off, and then he was back on board and ready to give his all for the relationship. I couldn't see his side of the story clearly at that time. It felt like his shift wasn't clearly shown or expressed or was a bit sudden. I felt like a small chunk of the story was missing towards the end with her friends also. But since the story is from the FL's POV, it's understandable.

I had a little bit of a hard time liking Arden in the beginning. She wasn't your perfect, nice heroine, but you just have to give her a chance without judgements as Henry does because they're the consequences of the things she's been through. It was nice to see that she finally meets some nice people apart from Henry, and she finally gets to have little joys in life.

Even though Arden is still in school, she is 19 and Henry 25, so the characters were quite mature, and the writing was too, so it felt like I was reading a NA more than YA, which was nice. Overall, I really liked the story, it reminded me of the time when I read Slammed by Colleen Hoover, and how surprised I was for liking the story and the writing, so wishing the author the best and a lot of success as I am left wanting to read more by the author.

Thank you for the advance copy in exchange for an honest review.