Title: To Find Him and Love Him Again
Series: Tyack & Frayne: Book Ten
Author: Harper Fox
Publisher: Self-Published
Length: 245 Pages
Category: Contemporary Romance, Magical Realism
Rating: 5 Stars
At a Glance: To Find Him and Love Him Again is a time- and reality-bending feat of romantic storytelling that left me in tears along the way.
Reviewed By: Lisa
Blurb: In a nightmare city, against all the odds, Gideon and Lee have found each other again. In this place and time they are strangers to each other, and their meeting has astounded them both with the shock of recognition and shared memories.
But Alice Rawle’s curse is in full play, and this reunion is the last thing she wants. When Lee vanishes, it’s up to Gideon to rescue him from Alice’s twisted timeline and help him return to their own beloved world.
Old friends and strange new enemies, mysterious figures from the wild landscapes of ancient Cornwall – all have come to accompany Gideon and Lee on their journey. Only by trust and love can each one of them escape from the web of Alice’s dream, and only by the renewal of a passion as ancient as the rocks and moorlands of Dark can Lee and Gideon find their way home.
Review: “Here you all are—preacher, prophet, beast. It’s time.”
It was seven years ago that I happened upon a novella called Once Upon a Haunted Moor and fell almost immediately under its spell. From Harper Fox’s writing to its heroes, Lee Tyack and Gideon Frayne, to the abundant gift of never quite knowing what was real, what was legend, and what was some sort of fever dream steeped in the mists and the standing stone circles on the Cornish moor, she has consistently gifted readers with so many characters to embrace and a reading experience that has never once disappointed. Now, in what is the overtly sentimental end to at least this chapter in Lee and Gid’s life together with family and friends in the village of Dark, Fox has turned time and reality on its proverbial ear and delivered readers a story that took three volumes to tell, left me in awe of all the threads and characters that came together to weave this ending, and found me in tears at certain points along the way.
We talk a lot about the happily-ever-after in romance, but rarely are we offered the opportunity to celebrate the happy-along-the-way like we have been with the Tyack & Frayne series. It’s one of the things that sets the series apart, the fact that Gideon and Lee have, for years, been established as a ’til-death-do-us-part couple, and while they have certainly had their fair share of external challenges during that time, there has never been a moment where it’s implied they wouldn’t work together to fight any- and everything that threatens their little family or their friends. They are an as steadfastly in love couple as has ever been penned, and to prove theirs is a love that knows no bounds, the very fabric of time is rent, which sends them spiraling into an alternate reality where they must do as the title of this final chapter suggests; they have to find each other across time and recall not only the love they share but the immutable trust they have in that love, as well as returning to their daughter, Tamsyn, and to all those who cherish and protect them, in order to realign the world in which they live.
Harper Fox has gathered some real-world issues into the telling of this final challenge for the Tyack-Fraynes, using those elements to fit in a way that makes those truths feel as though they could (should?) be fictional, which helps to create this reality-bending and time-fractured story. The ways in which Lee and Gideon have both impacted the people they’ve lived amongst is, without question, a key to the evolution of their romance and the resolution of their story.
The Tyack & Frayne series is the sort of storytelling I swoon over, a sweeping and all-encompassing sort of romance set against the backdrop of legend and lore and a mysticism that comes alive in its pages.
You can buy To Find Him and Love Him Again: Vol. Three here:
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I love this series, always first to mind in those ‘best ever’ year end polls!
I have read the first 2 of this book 10 in 3 parts, and recall being put through the wringer and having to concentrate hard to follow what was happening with all the alternate realities!
May have to read 1 & 2 again to get back up to speed
Everything is down-the-rabbit-hole and topsy-turvy, and I’m just so impressed by the way Harper brought back old characters and reimagined how things could’ve happened so differently if Lee and Gid had never met, what with Alice pulling the threads of time in all different directions. There are just so many lovely moments in this series, and this book in particular. I’m feeling sentimental over it being done, at least this phase, but Harper did say she has some ideas for another set of books. I think Tamsyn has some story left to tell :)