Title: Saving Sean
Series: Seattle Stories: Book Two
Author: Con Riley
Publisher: Amazon/Kindle Unlimited (2nd Edition)
Length: 280 Pages
Category: Contemporary Romance
At a Glance: Saving Sean exemplifies Con Riley’s brand of romantic fiction. There is a special warmth and sincerity to her writing that touches the heart through her leading men, and then extends itself to the people—the friends and family—who are important to them.
Reviewed By: Lisa
Blurb: No more running from love…
Nearly a year after being rejected for another man, Seattle paramedic Peter Morse is still pining, so when the one that got away asks him for a favor, he agrees. His mission: track down Sean Reid, the runaway brother of a mutual friend. Peter isn’t thrilled about it—until he finds Sean injured by the side of the road.
Everything about Sean stirs Peter’s protective instincts—saving people is what he lives for—but he never anticipated falling for someone so hell-bent on running from him. On top of his physical wounds, Sean struggles with grief and guilt, and the mess his estranged father left when he died threatens to overwhelm him.
Saving Sean means Peter must let go of his pride and turn to friends and family. Asking for help is a bitter pill for Peter to swallow, but if he can’t, how can he expect Sean to accept his help—and his love—in turn?
Review: Con Riley has long been a favorite author of contemporary genre romance. There is such an elegance to the way she crafts stories around relatably universal experiences—in this series, the running theme happens to be grief—delivered through characters who are immediately and immensely likable. Her people charm, provoke tender emotions, and always touch the heart of their audience. The Seattle Stories books are among some of the best examples of what it means to feel a deep adoration for fictional characters.
Peter Morse didn’t win Theo’s heart in book one of the series, After Ben. He isn’t offered a second chance to accomplish that in Saving Sean either. Rather, Peter is offered a very different gift—the gift of realizing that he didn’t lose love at all when he missed out on his chance with Theo. Peter simply hadn’t found love yet. Not the kind of love that means home, anyway. When Theo calls Peter out of the blue and asks for his help, it feels a little cruel, as Peter is still nursing feelings of loss over what might have been between them, but ignoring anyone in need is antithetical to who Peter is.
Doing a favor for Maggie, Theo’s assistant, wasn’t high on Peter’s list of priorities, it was altogether absent, but he grudgingly accepts the request to do a welfare check on her brother, Sean. What Peter discovers when he finally finds him is beyond anything he could have conceived of in his imagination. Not only is Sean laying injured on the side of the road, and not alone, but he runs away from Peter in a blind panic. When Peter tracks Sean down near his family’s isolated cabin, the shock Peter initially feels is exacerbated by the condition of the place. To say that the cabin is in a state of chaos is not much of an understatement. Sean and Maggie are grieving the passing of their dad, who suffered from an affliction which manifested as hoarding. Compounding Sean’s fruitless efforts to make his way through the labyrinth of his father’s mind, and what his father left behind, is the animosity and outright threats towards Sean from the folks who want him to sell his property to a developer in the hope of saving their town.
Peter’s empathy—or help, for that matter—isn’t something Sean is necessarily receptive to, even if it is something he needs. Sean may not understand what his dad was attempting to suss out, but he knows it was something and that was enough to entrench himself in a circular, infinite sort of mental hell, which makes Sean insecure at the least. How do you give up on something that might have been crucial, how do you simply throw away decades worth of research when it might lead to something important? Sean gets so bogged down in the dead ends and the long, meandering clues that lead to nowhere, or seem altogether insignificant, but how can he possibly know because he has no idea what he’s looking at, or even for. The claustrophobia of not only the cabin but of Sean’s thoughts and feelings is almost tangible, thanks to Riley’s care in detail and in relating how overwhelmed and overwhelming the situation is, and how Peter’s intervention may not have been appreciated at first, but was necessary.
Through several fits and starts, and with a little help from some familiar friends, Peter and Sean begin to wade through the mire and in doing so, they grow closer. Sean’s trust in Peter grows as well, thanks in large part to—and sometimes in spite of—Peter’s lack of brain-to-mouth filter. He has a tendency to verbalize exactly what he’s thinking and in doing so, Sean knows he’s getting the truth, always, whether he likes it or not. And that’s what he needed through it all, to believe that what Peter says is honest. Especially when Peter realizes that his home is wherever Sean happens to be.
Sandwiched between After Ben and Aiden’s Luck, Saving Sean is the only book in the series that has been significantly re-edited in its new release. The most important thing that didn’t change, however, is that it continues to exemplify Con Riley’s brand of romantic fiction. There is a special warmth and sincerity to her writing that touches the heart through her leading men, and then extends itself to the people—the friends and family—who are important to them. There’s a new Seattle Stories book coming this year, one that will also bring back the characters from Must Like Spinach (a book that I head-over-heels adore), and I can’t wait to visit with them again.
You can buy Saving Sean here:
[zilla_button url=”http://authl.it/B0821QPLRZ?d” style=”black” size=”large” type=”round” target=”_blank”] Amazon/Kindle Unlimited [/zilla_button]