Arllie's Reviews > Hearts Awakening

** spoiler alert ** I actually feel so sad in writing this review because it was SOOO good…up until the 60% mark or so. That’s when it went downhill. I loved Ellie’s character (her morals and values align with mine so I suppose that’s part of the reason) but she was so loveable and relatable that I shed tears for her. I also love how realistic everything was—Jackson not finding this woman initially attractive and knowing that he eventually would was exciting to me, and to see how their relationship would go from wariness to romantic literally had me flipping through the pages.

….and then it never happened? There was hardly any romance at all, and while I loooove slow burn, there were no romantic scenes with surreptitious glances and the lead up to the end was not satisfying enough to make up for it! I would have loved to see him grovel a little more and prove to her that he loved her through his actions, especially considering how he’d treated her the entire time.

And not once did Jackson ever consider Ellie as attractive or beautiful even *after* he supposedly fell in love with her. I’m sorry, but I never bought his feelings for her. Like you want me to believe that this man who spent majority of his POV wishing that instead of Ellie, it would be Dorothea with him up until two chapters before the final chapter, is now in love with Ellie? When did that happen? I’d have liked to see him admit that in his POV cos I never saw anything different in his actions, if not for his guilt at having his self righteous character being tainted. If he genuinely loved her, he wouldn’t have taken a whole WEEK to think about his decision. That made me feel so icky like if you loved someone, there would be no doubt. The only reason he probably chose her was because she told him she loved him and that put extra guilt/pressure on him to choose her. Either way, he only wants her to be a mum for the kids, not as someone he genuinely loves. Poor Ellie. I felt like she was drawn the short straw. The guy didn’t really like her at all.

I really REALLY wish this would have been different because I wanted to love this book so much. The way it was written was beautiful and it had the potential of living up to everything I adore in these sorts of books.