Summary
April Landau thinks she has everything she’s ever wanted. Her high school sweetheart, a house she can’t afford, her bipolar tabby cat, and she’s all set to begin her Junior year of college. Just when she least expects it, her life gets thrown for a loop. When things between her and her long time boyfriend unravel, she becomes stuck in a downward spiral of emotion. Finally, opening her eyes to the fact that she may have given up more than she ever could have imagined in this relationship. She finds herself struggling to keep her head above water.
Enter April’s next door neighbor— Jared Hoffman. He’s her complete opposite. A high school drop out who was forced to take over his parent’s business after their untimely death. It’s no surprise this tragedy affected him greatly, causing him to recede almost completely from society.
But he has one secret. A secret he’s been carrying around for years.
What happens when their worlds collide? Can an old friendship be the one thing that brings these two back to life?
Review
This book was amazing! In the beginning, when April was still hung up on her breakup with Hunter, her personality was a bit childish and immature. I had to remind myself that she was in college-age and not high school, because her mentality was so of that nature. Especially since Hunter was a cheating, lying a–hole and she still kept going back to him! The first half of the book got on my nerves with April’s attitiude.
It got better when she started hanging out with Jared “Jare Bear” Hoffman, her next-door neighbor, who had been secretly in love with her since they were childhood friends. But they stopped hanging out after his parents died years before, leaving her to wonder what she did wrong. But it turned out, she didn’t do anything wrong; he just needed time to process their deaths and figure out how to take over his father’s construction business at the age of 16.
When April got arrested from punching some prick in the face while drunk, Jared bailed her out of jail [ and Officer John Smith, who was crushing on her] and that’s when I knew that Jared really liked her. But he kept getting upset that she wasn’t being her true self. She was being ‘Hunter’s April’ and not ‘April’, the girl he fell in love with. And when April met Jared’s construction crew, her old self showed a lot more. Some of Jared’s quotes were so cute and smart as hell:
“Apes, it’s always been you. I’ve been in love with you since the moment I first saw you. I just didn’t know what it was called. I’ve played beside you, I’ve watched you go to prom, I watched you walk through the halls at school, I’ve seen you crying over boys that didn’t deserve you, I’ve seen you kiss guys that could never love you. I didn’t want to say anything. I didn’t want to kiss you before because… I don’t want to be your rebound. I don’t want to be just another guy—because I am the guy for you.”
“April, I know you are perfectly capable of opening a door or pulling out your own chair. Chivalrous acts are done as a sign of respect to you. Men, real men, that is, do these things for women not because we have to, but because we feel they deserve to be honored in some small, tiny way every single day.”
Jared is the most confident without being cocky, and I loved that about him and it showed in how he treated April how much he really cared about her, unlike Hunter.
And even when I thought the book would end with an HEA (Happily ever after/happy ending), a horrible accident tested their relationship. They almost broke up when April went to talk to Hunter, but she did it to tell him off, that Jared was “half the man Hunter will ever be”. But as soon as Jared understood, they got back together!
I asked Sheena Hutchinson if there was going to be a sequel to Discovering April, but she said no. Bummer, because I’d love to see if April and Jared have kids and their story carry on. But there is a compilation series based on April’s boss Jack at the coffee shop and his girlfriend, Sera, called The Awakening, so if you want to check out her other works.
I’ll probably find myself reading this one again and again, and Sheena’s other books as well. She has a talent for romance and comedic characters!
Rating: 5/5 stars
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