Friends to Lovers Got Their Second Chances...

I was really excited to listen to this book because it's a combo of Peter Styles and JP Oliver.

I love friends to lovers trope and this story is just that, plus second chances. The story and the characters are relatable. There's some angst and drama, but I love how Wes and Sam overcame their challenges and took another chance in deserving love.

The narrator is new to me and it was a bit of a struggle to listen to him first few hours... but I got through it because the story was enjoyable.

3 people found this helpful

Sweet and heartfelt!

Sam left behind the only man he ever loved to join the Navy, and he has regretted it ever since that day.

The day when Sam left, Wes not only lost the man he loved but also his best friend.
One fateful kiss, years apart and words left unsaid.
Can Sam and Wes get their chance at happiness before it's too late?

This was a sweet, poignant, heartfelt, friends to lovers romance.
I liked the build up of the story. Sam and Wes were real and relatable characters. Their story was truly beautiful!
Barney Parkwynne did a good audio delivery. Overall I absolutely recommend this if you like a friends to lovers romance served with medium angst.

3 people found this helpful

Stunning, vivid details, but not always believable

I have mixed feelings about Wes and Sam’s romance. When I started listening, the narrator really threw me off. His pace was too slow for me, his tone was a bit monotonous, and he enunciated some words very strangely. Increasing the speed to 1.2x helped a lot, but I had to actively ignore the lack of emotions and over enunciation multiple times. That being said, once I got to know Wes and Sam, I was able to sink into this story and really feel everything that was going on.

While parts of this story were amazingly written, I seriously struggled with some of the choices these authors made. For starters, I don’t even think the first half of this book was a romance—instead it was a graphic, brutal account of military violence and torture so realistic that I felt sick to my stomach just listening to it. Part of me was in awe by just how much I felt every ounce of Sam’s pain and hope and fear, but I also have no idea why these scenes were included with so much detail since they added almost nothing to advance the romance in this story. It seemed to me like the authors were trying to make a point that Sam’s love for Wes kept him sane, but I just couldn’t see where that epic love came from given how limited their interactions were previously. The letters were a very sweet and touching addition, but not enough to convince me that any of this was actually real. From Wes’s end, I could at least understand why he fell so hard, because he had years of crushing on Sam.

Once Sam did come home, the romance fell apart even more for me. Wes was full of so much guilt and self-hate that he didn’t allow himself to be there for Sam at all, which I found very annoying. Then when Sam was lucid, their interactions were so painfully awkward that I just wanted to fast-forward through all the cringey moments. I usually love a hefty dose of pining, but if I had to listen to one more instance of Wes rhapsodizing about how Sam makes him feel whole while he acted like a total idiot when he did get to see him in person, I think I’d have screamed. At this point, both men were claiming to be so deeply and emotionally in love with each other (but only in their private thoughts), and I was just not on board with the way they were acting around each other. My disconnect with the romance didn’t get any better as the story progressed, and in the end I had to put aside my disbelief and accept that these two made no sense at all so that I could enjoy the last couple of chapters.

After such a detailed and slow-paced start, I was surprised by how quickly the end of this book caught up to me. For a story with such detailed scenes of Sam’s trauma, it completely left me hanging when it came to his recovery. I was expecting to see Sam and Wes grow and bond while they each came to terms with all that Sam went through, but instead it felt like these two were pretending like nothing out of the ordinary happened. In addition, I never found out what happened with Sam’s dad, Wes’s family, or even why Sam was so eager to get out of Poplar, Kansas. I adored the glimpses into Sam and Wes’s married life, but if anything they left me with even more questions about how Sam and Wes got from an awkward, new couple to the happy, settled family the epilogue made them out to be.

**I voluntarily listened to a free copy of this book. This review expresses my honest thoughts and opinions.

1 person found this helpful

Good story

I enjoyed the story, it warmed my heart I am a sucker for happy endings. The only bad thing I have is that it took me awhile to get use to the narrator the voice was good, but the way he would pronounce words and the hard way he would end/say certain words grated on my nerves.

great

this was a wonderful story. I did have a hard time getting through it myself had nothing to do with the storyline or the narration.

narration sucked

couldn't stand the narrators voice, didn't make it pasa chapter 1. Good luck listening too.

good book

I liked this story. It was a long one for sure. So I had to split it up listening to it.
This was a second chance romance book that will tear your heart up.
Wes has secretly loved his best friend's brother for what feels like forever.
Sam is a Navy Seal and is called to duty. He can't tell anyone where he is going it's a secret mission.
months have passed and there has been no word from Sam,
What Wes and Sam's family don't know is that Sam was captured and is now a POW.
He was severely tortured during his capture.luckily they were able to rescue him, but he might not ever be the same again.
This book was so emotional and powerful. I enjoyed it. The narrator did a good job with it. He seemed a bit slow while reading it so it threw me off a bit at the beginning,but I settled in after a bit.

A Very Angsty Second Chance Romance

I'm generally a big fan of the hurt/comfort, brother's best friend, and second chance romance tropes, but "Coming Home" never really clicked for me. It was compelling at the start with sweet starry night kisses (swoonworthy) and whispered promises between MCs Wes and Sam, but quickly shifted to an ever-growing pool of angst for them individually and in their tentative relationship. I did like the characters and felt empathy for them, particularly given all that Sam went through, but after a while their constant inner turmoil just felt exhausting and repetitive.

I also never found a comfortable groove listening to narrator Barney Parkwynne and his delivery didn't enhance the story for me, which is very much a personal preference so other listeners may not have that issue. I received an ARC of this audio book and have left this honest review voluntarily.

This was ok

I struggled to finish this audiobook. I felt like things were repeated. Wes was in love with his best friend's brother Sam. Sam joins the military but before he leaves, he and Wes have a moment together. Things happen to Sam and he ends up coming home. This is where the story got blah for me. Sam treated Wes like crap. Or more like major miscommunication. But it didn't work for me. I felt like the kept saying/thinking the same thing over and over. There was some drama but nothing major. It ends in a HEA. I didn't like the narration. And maybe that was part of the problem.

An emotional tale of a second chance at love.

This story will tug on your heart strings even though it is a bit long in the tooth. Narrator Barney Parkwynne does a great job.