🛻💐 “Forever Free” (Forever Series #4) (2024) 💐🛻 – Book Review

Welcome to the Blog Tour for Forever Free by Hope Toler Dougherty, hosted by JustRead Publicity Tours!

About the Book

Title: Forever Free
Series: Forever #4
Author: Hope Toler Dougherty
Publisher: Scrivenings Press
Release Date: January 29, 2024
Genre: Christian Contemporary Romance

Phoebe Sinclair combines her love of flowers and teaching to nurture a cut flower business on her grandfather’s land. She’s got her hands full growing the farm, growing her customer base, and dealing with her growing attraction to the aloof man who’s volunteered to help make her farming dream come true. 

Can she focus on her main job, or will a pair of yearning eyes and a hurting heart divert her worthy goals? 

Heath Daniels has resigned himself to a life of singleness as he watches his siblings couple up and set wedding dates. Tracking their happiness, however, is more difficult than he expected. A real struggle, in fact. 

Feeling the old troubles creep back to tempt him—troubles from the bad time when he dropped out of college to explore less-than-noble pursuits—propels him to volunteer for manual labor that leaves him exhausted at the end of every day and out of trouble. 

His additional hours of agri-business, however, lead to more struggles with an intriguing farmer. Does he have the strength to resist old temptations as well as a beautiful new one, too?  

PURCHASE LINKS: Goodreads | Amazon | Barnes & Noble | BookBub

More Books in The Series:

   

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My Review

Thank you in advance to the author, Hope Toler Dougherty, for providing a complimentary review copy through JustRead Publicity Tours. A positive review was not required or requested, and all words are my own.

Believe it or not, I’d been asked to review the first three books in the series, which I’d HOPED to do before now. They still need to be read. And, I say this also because the books are connected by the siblings and how they meet spouses, fiancées/fiancés.

So, this is the first book I’ve read by the author.

The books, in order:

#1 – Forever Music (Josie and Ches; 2020)

#2 – A Hatteras Surprise (Ben and Ginny; 2022 – Novella)

#3 – Forever Home (Sam and Merritt; 2022)

And, this one Forever Free, features Heath Daniels and Phoebe. 

Returning from the series, if only briefly:

🏫 Josie

⚖️ Ches

🏦 Ben

🏖️ Ginny

📻 Sam

🎤 Merritt

This also has some potentially heavy themes – DUI (only inferred), alcohol addiction (Heath), drowsy driving fatality (Dayna’s death). These might be difficult for some readers.

Phoebe is at the hardware store and runs into Heath – he helps her load her truck, and remembers her as the bossy person at his sister Josie’s wedding. As it turns out, Phoebe was in charge of the flower arrangements. They accuse the other of making Josie cry, and Heath didn’t make a good impression on Phoebe.

Heath needs to be “doing” something outside of his work – and calls up the woman over a charity he has signed on with. She finds him a place at Honeysuckle Farms. He’s been sober for 5 years, proud of it, but is still tormented by guilt over a high school girlfriend’s death.

And, it is there he runs into Phoebe again. While her grandfather (Dempsey) owns it, Phoebe runs the farm and wants it. Dempsey realizes everyone has history, and accepts Heath.

It isn’t long until Heath starts offering some business suggestions to Phoebe – namely using social media to promote the business, as well as other fun events.

Despite his overbearing manner, Phoebe immediately likes Heath. But, he has no room for a relationship in his life. As soon as Josie sees Phoebe with Heath, she thinks he needs someone.

Even Phoebe’s grandfather is trying to tell Heath that perhaps God has something better in mind, or someone better. Heath denies it.

Starting to feel those old emotions, Heath asks the head of the charity to find something else, he cites personality conflicts. But, he decides to continue to honor the contract. He opts to keep distant with Phoebe.

Phoebe knows there is something going on, and wants to be his friend.

She soon learns, upon seeing him in a panic attack, that it is connected to a tragedy. He blames himself for the girl’s death. To honor her – he always has her favorite breakfast. This year, he forgot and feels horrible. He then tells Phoebe about his own accident and what followed.

Despite Phoebe’s good intentions in comforting her, Heath is angry at her. But, he apologizes. He also asks her to come with him to a dinner at his parents’ place.

Even though there are moments of his compassion, and his offers to help the business, Phoebe thinks he isn’t interested and tries to keep from being around him, although they work together for an event.

His business ideas are certainly helping the farm become profitable. While he is quick to anger, he does apologize. There are several incidents of will they/won’t they.

When Phoebe is successful with an event, she is quick to thank him. Only the incident pushes him over the edge and he chastises her.

He then finds his way to a place that he didn’t want to be in – but needs to be.

With everyone telling him to forgive himself and encouraging him to move on – he wonders if it is possible. And, if he deserves it.

Dougherty kept the romantic tension going until nearly the end which had me on the edge of my seat in this beautiful, inspiring, emotional, tragic, and realistic story.  One that was gripping and even, at times, difficult to read.

This absolutely drew me right in and definitely held my attention. It wasn’t like those “just can’t stop” reading books, but it was one that I wanted to read through. The short chapters helped. But, also Dougherty didn’t lag the book along. It didn’t speed up either.

To be honest, I really didn’t like Heath throughout most of the book. Yes, he had his demons – but, he truly wasn’t responsible for Dayna’s death. She made a bad judgment call. It is something many of us DON’T think about. But, something I am only too keenly aware of. Being a single caregiver to my mother, I rarely get any sleep for any length of time.

So, I am VERY aware of the moments where I simply don’t feel safe enough to drive. Yet, there is not enough information out there about it. It’s interesting that even some health care professionals have snickered when I said something about being so tired that I didn’t feel safe behind the wheel.

I absolutely adored Phoebe and her compassion towards Heath. And, so many times I wanted to scream – “he isn’t worth it”. I swear that man frustrated me. There was one moment, towards the last third of the book that I completely despised him. His hot/cold routine with Phoebe did little to make me like him. I honestly felt Phoebe would be better off with someone else.

Overall, I did enjoy the book even when I was frustrated. It is a second-chance, friends-to-more, slow burn romance. Most of the real progress for the romance happens about 6% towards the end. And, like Phoebe, some readers might be shocked about Heath’s 180° turn.

This does have some elements of the Christian faith, but they are subtle and some readers may not notice these. Those who need the message contained in will no doubt find it.

As there has been some confusion over “clean” reads and “sweet” reads with regard to language, intimacy, and affection – I personally consider this a clean, no-spice read. Affection is merely limited to a kiss. There is no foul language either.

I am definitely going to be reading the other three books quite soon.

Those who’ve read the other books in this series won’t want to miss this one. And, those who enjoy clean, wholesome reads won’t want to miss it either.

I’d like to know if there is another book in the series so I can see how everyone else turned out. I’m definitely interested in reading her other work as well.

RATING:  

4 ⭐⭐⭐⭐/5 ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ – Goodreads  

4 ⭐⭐⭐⭐/5 ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ – Bookbub  

4 ⭐⭐⭐⭐/5 ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ – Personal Rating (see rating explanation in this blog: https://readingexcursions.blogspot.com/2020/01/rating-system-2020-changes.html;update https://readingexcursions.blogspot.com/2022/07/what-goes-into-my-reviews-2022-edition.html) 

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About the Author

Hope Toler Dougherty holds a Master’s degree in English and taught at East Carolina University and York Technical College. Her early novels are Irish Encounter, Mars…With Venus Rising, and Rescued Hearts. Her Forever series includes her latest, Forever Free, Forever Music, Forever Home, and the novella, "A Hatteras Surprise."

Connect with Hope by visiting hopetolerdougherty.com to follow her on social media and sign up for email updates.

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Tour Giveaway

(1) winner will win print copies of all 4 books in the Forever series, a $25 Amazon card, and a bookmark!

Full tour schedule linked below. The giveaway begins at midnight March 4, 2024 and will last through 11:59 PM EST on March 11, 2024. Winners will be notified within 2 weeks of close of the giveaway and given 48 hours to respond or risk forfeiture of prize. US only. Void where prohibited by law or logistics.

Giveaway is subject to JustRead Publicity Tours Giveaway Policies.

Enter Giveaway

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