* * *
Love doesn’t have to be perfect to be true…
Years ago, Tanner Green loved Sunny Letman. She was meant to
be his first kiss, first love, first everything. Then their world spun
upside-down and out of control.
Free-spirited Sunny doesn’t do commitment. Sure, guys are
great for a night or a week, but she always leaves first. That is, until
professional skateboarder and town golden boy, Tanner Green, unexpectedly walks
back into her life.
Despite their broken history, a fragile and undeniably
electric connection still holds them together. Now Tanner has to convince Sunny
that even though love isn’t always perfect, it’s worth sticking around for. . .
Now that we have Talia and Bran’s story all settled, it’s
time to turn our attention to one of Talia’s best friends, Sunny. From what
little we had glimpsed of her before, she comes off as a happy-go-lucky sort of
girl who’s easy to get along with and someone Talia looks up to very much.
Appearances can be deceiving my friends. Sunny puts up a very successful façade
but underneath that is a young woman who is so cynical of love and commitment
that she’d rather get involved in random hook-ups than risk having her heart broken.
Then Tanner shows up. Yes, Tanner as in the one-time boyfriend
of Talia’s sister Pippa, and Talia’s regretful one-night stand. THAT Tanner. He
catches Sunny during one of her random hook-ups. It's almost a stand-off between them. She refuses to be anything other than she is or allow his opinion of her to bring her down. For all she cares, he betrayed Pippa and he hurt Talia badly.
Those things are unforgivable. But there’s more. She's purposefully ugly towards him because he's the only one who
knows about her crappy childhood. He was witness to one awful
incident that drastically changed the nature of their once close friendship. To Tanner, Sunny
has always been on his mind and the one he has loved. To Sunny, he’s a reminder
of all the painful memories and feelings she wants to repress. The fact that he can see through her BS makes her even more hostile.
When Sunny has to go on an unexpected road trip to see her estranged mother,
Tanner offers to drive. She accepts his offer knowing full well that this could
change things. It’s during this road trip that the truth come to light about certain events and the nature of his relationship with ex-girlfriend, Pippa. We
see that Tanner isn't quite the bad guy we’ve thought him to be. He's suffered a lot and has kept everything to himself. And Sunny, that
sweet, misguided girl, has to come clean to herself about what she’s doing with
her life. Tanner calls her out several times and each time she tries to fight it until she relents.
I enjoyed getting to know Sunny and Tanner in this jam-packed novella. Some details that were revealed helped with
understanding Talia better, too. This is a sometimes sweet, most of the time messy, and all the time sexually charged
story about frenemies turned lovers. Some bits were a bit much, only in the sense that I was thinking “oh
girl, what are you doing now?” If you loved what Lia Riley gave you in the
other three Off The Map books, you’ll find this one just as good!
~ Bel
