Love will Find a Way

Love will Find a Way 

by Barbara Freethy

Dylan Prescott and Gary Tanner were best friends since they were kids and that friendship withstood the test of time.  Even when Gary married Rachel, the one women Dylan wanted but couldn't have. 

Rachel was off limits.  And Dylan respected that.  His best friend got to her first.  So he went on and built a successful business while maintaining his friendship with Gary, but only viewing their marriage in a peripheral capacity.  That is until Gary dies.  

Then everything changes.

Rachel knew the first time she met Gary he was going to be someone special.  After all he ate the special apple.  Rachel's family owns an orchard and once every so many years one special tree will bear fruit.  Family legend says whomever eats the apple that a female descendant shares from this tree is destined to be her one true love.  On their first meeting Rachel gave Gary one of those apples.  So for her, when their romance goes whirlwind she isn't surprised.  It was after all part of the plan.

Once Gary is gone a bunch of inconsistencies start to show cracks in a foundation that Rachel had been sure was rock solid.  In the beginning you feel for her because her husband has just died, but as the story progresses you have to wonder how Rachel could have been so oblivious.  Her husband spent every week in the city where he worked while she stayed on the farm. 

While he was alive this worked for them for the duration of their marriage.  This was something I would never understand.  What is the point of getting married if you aren't going to grow your lives together?  But okay, I suspended disbelief because this author did a good job of painting Gary as the guy who just wanted his wife to be happy.  And if that meant she didn't want to live in the city so be it.  As the story progresses, we learn that maybe his selflessness had more of a selfish tint than we might have expected. 

When the story starts Dylan is confronted by Rachel's fears and concerns that Gary didn't die in an accident, but actually took his own life.  Now she is wondering if Gary had more going on in the city where he spent all that time?  Rachel doesn't know what to believe,  or even if she really wants to know, but she does know where to get the answers.  Dylan, her husbands best friend.

In a nut shell this story sucked me in.  I wanted to know if Gary killed himself.  I wanted to know if he was having an affair.  These were all things that grabbed me and kept me turning the page.  And of course Rachel and Dylan are forced to face their mutual attraction.  An attraction we learn, that has been simmering for years.

There is a secondary romance with Rachel's younger sister that I adored, more so than the main story.  I think because by the end I was no longer longer invested in the romance, just in the mystery of what happened to Gary.  At least I got my closure on that issue, but I did have a hard time with some of the closing points.  

Overall it was a good read and won't deter me from picking up another of Ms. Freethy books.  But this wasn't a keeper.  At least not for me.  Have you read it?  If so, tell me what you thought.