Dawn has her future planned out to the tiniest detail, and with only one summer left to spend in Hargrave Cove, all of her dreams are about to come true. She will go to university in the city, finally let her best friend Zeke, know she’s in love with him, and she’ll become the best screenplay writer the world has ever seen.
But all that changes when a summer storm brings with it a girl who dances in the rain, turns Zeke’s head, and has very strange ideas on what happiness should be. Her arrival brings with it a set of cataclysmic events that challenge everything Dawn ever believed and drive her further away from her dreams than she ever was before.
Thank god she still has Luke, the widowed manager of the local bar, to talk to. Otherwise she’d be completely alone.
When the storm comes again, one thing is sure, Dawn’s life will be nothing like she originally planned…
As part of my New Year’s resolutions, I am determined to try new authors to me so I gladly jumped at the chance to read In the Wind by Author Lilliana Anderson, a truly poignant, coming-of-age story with a surprising mix of forbidden love and deep emotion.
Dawn is a square peg, just finishing high school and anxiously waiting for her university acceptance with her best friend, Zeke. They can’t wait to get out of their beautiful but small and confining beach town. Dawn and Zeke have been friends for years but she yearns for more. She is in love with him but cat get him to look at her as anything more than a fiend. He has been her saving grace since he moved in. Along comes Shea, a wild girl who is new in town. At this point I assumed the story would go in one direction, and it took several very unexpected turns. What I thought would be a sweet, New Adult romance turned into an emotional, angsty story that kept me turning the pages until the very end.
Dawn is fascinated by her new friend Shea, who is a free spirit and is the complete opposite of careful, deliberate Dawn. Shea awakens certain feelings in Dawn but Shea is harboring some very dark secrets which all come crashing down in the end. You just know Shea is trouble, but Dawn has to find out for herself. I actually felt sorry for Shea after her real story comes to light.
“…every time she opened her mouth, an intelligence spilled from her lips that I hadn’t expected when I first saw her twirling in the wind and the rain.”
Every scene in this book is unforgettable. I loved how Zeke and Dawn’s relationship evolved from best friends to something more, and how Shea turned out to be not all that she seemed to be. Dawn had some hard choices to make in this story, and I was often surprised by where Ms. Anderson took her characters. Not at all the sweet story I was expecting, IN THE WIND is nonetheless a wonderfully poignant story about finding your true self and learning to leave your past behind. I loved Dawn’s journey toward self-discovery. The seaside setting is so moody and descriptive and I felt a little lost after I finished this book. The ending of this story was perfect for the characters. All in all, a very surprising and satisfying read from a wonderfully talented author!
Favorite quote:
“He was the light that pushed away the darkness and filled my heart with hope”
(ARC provided by the author in return for an honest review.)
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