Title: The Stopping Place
Author: Lily Morton
Publisher: Amazon/Kindle Unlimited
Length: 71 Pages
Category: Contemporary Romance
At a Glance: The Stopping Place may be short on page count, but it’s long on emotion and delivers a happy ending that more than satisfied the sentimental side in me.
Reviewed By: Lisa
Blurb: Simeon Frith is recovering from a car accident at his house in Cornwall. He’s a successful man and usually very self-sufficient, but after attempting to open a can of baked beans with a brick, he realises that he needs help. However, he never imagined that putting an advert in the paper for an assistant would result in the gorgeous Ziggy Tuesday sauntering into his life.
The much younger Ziggy is fun and free-spirited, and an attraction quickly grows between them. When they finally sleep together and Ziggy insists that it be completely strings-free, Simeon can’t believe his luck. However, to his horror, he develops unforeseen feelings for the laidback surfer, and he can’t stop them, despite knowing that Ziggy will always leave. It’s what he’s done all his life.
From bestselling author Lily Morton comes a short story about a summer fling that is going to change two men’s lives forever.
Review: I don’t mind admitting I was one of the readers who was a bit disappointed to find out Simeon Frith wasn’t going to get his own happily ever after in Lily Morton’s Finding Home series. He may have lost Milo to Niall Fawcett—and, let’s face it, was there ever any doubt?—but he made enough of an impression on me, in both his earnestness and his gracious acceptance that he’d never had much of a chance, that I wanted to see more of him. Well, we may not have gotten a full-length novel out of it, but what Morton offers up in this sweet and sincere novella more than makes up for things.
The close proximity trope is always a fave, and that’s what Morton builds upon in the relationship between Simeon and Ziggy Tuesday. Ziggy being Simeon’s caretaker while Simeon convalesces after a car accident gives them the ideal opportunity to begin to feel things in just a few short weeks that might have taken much longer under normal circumstances. In fact, The Stopping Place doesn’t waste a single moment to show readers that their physical connection has advanced well beyond patient and carer. And the emotional connection as well, all things being considered.
The credibility of their falling in love with each other so hastily comes down to a sense of empathy that builds for both characters, but Ziggy in particular, and this is something that Lily Morton accomplishes, and then capitalizes on, with precision, every single time. Simeon is obviously embedded in a career that came about as less a passion and more a means of getting in a dig at his father—who is clearly horrible—but it’s unravelling the mystery that is Ziggy Tuesday that drives the story and gives the novella its name. There are things in his life, from his past, that he doesn’t talk about, things that mean he lives a vagabond life and only returns ‘home’ when he needs the connection to someplace that means something to him. It’s that backstory that creates a bond of empathy, which is this author’s signature, along with the humor peppered throughout her books. The feels and chuckles are always accessible and right on the mark.
The Stopping Place may be short on page count, but it’s long on emotion and delivers a happy ending that more than satisfied the sentimental side in me.
You can buy The Stopping Place here:
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