The Price He Paid: A Second Chance Romance

ARC for honest review with no compensation The Price He Paid by Jean Brashear is a standalone, such a powerful, emotional story and totally not what I expected...needs more stars! David Langley, the town’s golden boy and Callie Hunter, the rebel girl and far to young for any emotional entanglement, spun a few lies and they became lovers but a tragedy tore them apart...then other things took David down a bad road... to prison. Now 15 years later they are both back in town... Callie, now an attorney, doesn’t know what happened to David after she left and he knows second chances don’t happen for convicts. Since he has gotten out of prison he just wants to stay out but someone is determined to put him back there. Can Callie keep David from prison, figure out what happened all those years ago, rekindle the love they had as young lovers and find their HEA???

This story was so intense and full of emotion. It was so not what I was expecting. I liked David and felt really sorry for him. I liked Callie, and was sorry that she found herself in a bad situation after working so hard to pull her life together. David and Callie were both damaged people. Yet, they were damaged at different points in their lives. When their second chance came around, I could only wonder how it was ever going to work. The author did an excellent job of conveying all of the hurt, pain, despair, desperation, and anguish that David and Callie endured. Underlying all of that pain was a love and sense of trust they had to rediscover. Oak Hollow was not a sweet little small town. There was a lot of jealousy, rage, fear, hate, secrets, and anger. It became apparent early on that David was holding something back. The hopeful teenager that he used to be was gone after 15 years in prison. Callie's life has turned around since her teenage years, but she had to come to terms with one looming mistake. There are some things, I would have liked to have read more about. I can't figure out a way to list them here without giving away the story. One thing I can say is that David and Callie get their HEA, but an epilogue would have helped, at least for me. There was so much angst and despair, that when the story started to lighten up I could have used more happy times. If you have read Jean Brashear's Sweetgrass Springs series or Texas Heroes, this is not that type of book. I can't say that I enjoyed it, but I can say the book is well written. Once I started it, I found it hard to put down. I needed to see it through to the end, hoping there was some happy somewhere in it. There was. Eventually..... I voluntarily read and reviewed the Advanced Reader Copy of this book.

David and Callie’s story tore at my heart. David’s story was especially heartbreaking; finding out if he would ever have any happiness in his life kept me whipping through the pages to see if he would ever have a HEA despite his belief that there would never be any happiness for him. David spent fifteen long hard years of his life in jail. Now he’s out and back home trying to live a quiet life and take care of his frail mother however, he let his town down in his youth and most are unwilling to forgive and forget how he disappointed them. Callie and David were childhood lovers, David standing by Callie despite what anyone else thought. But then they were ripped apart by Callie’s mother who took her off to another city. Years later Callie is a successful prosecutor in the big city when she’s called back to the town where she and David met to settle the estate of the one woman who truly cared about her when she was a teen. There she finds a now bitter and angry David who wants nothing to do with her or the help she’s sure she can give him. Their story and the way Ms. Brashear writes it ripped my heart to pieces and reassembled it in a softer way. I can’t wait for her next book to come out. I was gifted an ARC and am happily reviewing it with my honest evaluation.