ISBN: 9781101885024 (hardcover)
ISBN: 9781101885031 (ebook)
ASIN: B01FC02OS8 (Kindle edition)
Publication Date: February 7, 2016
From the New York Times bestselling author of Blackberry Winter and The Violets of March comes a gripping, poignant novel about the kind of love that never lets go, and the heart’s capacity to remember.
While enjoying a romantic candlelit dinner with her fiance, Ryan, at one of Seattle’s chicest restaurants, Kailey Crane can’t believe her good fortune: She has a great job as a writer for the Herald and is now engaged to a guy who is perfect in nearly every way. As they leave the restaurant, Kailey spies a thin, bearded homeless man on the sidewalk. She approaches him to offer up her bag of leftovers, and is stunned when their eyes meet, then stricken to her very core: The man is the love of her life, Cade McAllister.
When Kailey met Cade ten years ago, their attraction was immediate and intense everything connected and felt “right.” But it all ended suddenly, leaving Kailey devastated. Now the poor soul on the street is a faded version of her former beloved: His weathered and weary face is as handsome as Kailey remembers, but his mind has suffered in the intervening years. Over the next few weeks, Kailey helps Cade begin to piece his life together, something she initially keeps from Ryan. As she revisits her long-ago relationship, Kailey realizes that she must decide exactly what and whom she wants.
Alternating between the past and the present, Always is a beautifully unfolding exploration of a woman faced with an impossible choice, a woman who discovers what she’s willing to save and what she will sacrifice for true love.
Kailey Crane is a thirty-something-year-old journalist engaged to a good man, Ryan Winston. They are in the midst of arranging for the upcoming wedding and life is good. Well, as good as can be expected when you’re engaged to someone involved in real estate and you’re writing an investigate piece about how developers are in the process of destroying a necessary social services institution, namely a homeless shelter. Kailey and Ryan have their differences, but they do love one another and are looking forward to building a life together. Ryan knows that Kailey has a past and that her past has involved a lover or two, but he’s willing to let the past stay in the past as long as they can build a future together. Everything is going well until the man from Kailey’s past returns and his disappearance and return are surrounded by a mystery. Can Kailey ignore the old love of her life in order to build a new life? Can she help the old love of her life without destroying her new love life? And more importantly than either of these questions, is that old love truly dead?
I’ve just got to say that I loved Always. I ripped through this story without interruption in one sitting on Sunday evening. This story touched me in so many ways, but primarily because I have a good friend from high school that suffered a traumatic brain injury as a result of a severe beating and his recovery has been long and hard. Ms. Jio has taken several sensitive subject matters, traumatic brain injury or TBI and homelessness and incorporated them into a story about loss and love. I enjoyed the twin storylines, as they provide the reader with a glimpse of Kailey’s early relationship with Cade and its development, as well as her current relationship with Ryan and the impact finding Cade has on it. I enjoyed all of the characters, the action, and the settings. Seriously, I loved this book and can foresee me rereading it over and over again. (Yes, it was just that good in my not-so-humble opinion.) Always is more than just a love story it is a story that pulls at the emotions as it asks what will and won’t we do for the sake of love. If you’ve read any of Ms. Jio’s writings then I encourage you to go out and grab a copy of Always to read. If you’ve never read anything by Ms. Jio then Always may be the perfect starter book. I will say this, set aside enough time to read uninterrupted and for those of you that get a little misty when reading emotionally laden books, grab some tissues.
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