Buried In Between
Leanne Lovegrove
Self-published
2024, 303p
Purchased personal copy
Blurb {from the publisher/Goodreads.com}: She’s not your average city girl looking for a new beginning…
Ava Montgomery is desperate for a safe place to call home. On the run from her controlling marriage and fearing for her son’s safety, she hopes the small town of Bellethorpe she left years ago is the one location her husband won’t think to look.
Local builder, Noah Hawthorn, has no time for city chicks disrupting his town’s idyllic country lifestyle. Especially one who purchased the dream house he planned to buy before his wife left him.
But Noah can’t say no to renovating Ava’s home, because the money will help him to fight for custody of his daughter. Except when they uncover an incredible historical find on the grounds, the secrets they’ve both been keeping threaten to be exposed.
If Ava and Noah can’t learn to trust their hidden feelings for each other, it’s not only their pasts that are in danger of catching up with them. Their chances of building a new future together could be destroyed too…
This was another book I read before heading off on my reading retreat (I’m there right now) and although it is part of a series, you don’t need to have read the rest. I hadn’t and I had a great time with this, I enjoyed the local community and didn’t feel like I’d missed anything.
Ava has bought a beautiful old house in the small town of Bellethorpe in Queensland. She’s on the run, having basically escaped with the clothes on her back and fled halfway across the world back to the town she lived in as a teen. She has her young son and it’s clear she’s hiding. Ava is paranoid about being found, she keeps everything locked, she doesn’t want to take any chances.
Noah is a local man who desperately wanted to buy the house Ava has just purchased. He thought he had an agreement with the real estate but then Ava swept in with her cash offer and now Noah is devastated. He has a dream for that house. He’s desperate to get his daughter back after his wife moved away, taking the six year old with her. The house seems to be part of that dream he has and he’s upset to have it snatched away….enough to be difficult at first with Ava, until he realises that there could be opportunity in being hired by Ava to fix it up.
I had a good time with this, I enjoyed both Ava and Noah as characters. Both are newly single parents – Ava has left her husband behind in a foreign country and returned to Australia with their young son, having realised that there will be a strong difference in how she wants him to be raised and how he will be raised if she’d stayed in that country. Noah’s wife has left him and returned to Brisbane, unhappy with life in the small town. She’s taken their daughter with him and although she isn’t restricting access to her, she isn’t exactly helping either, with all the onus on Noah, which, with balancing work, is difficult. Noah is very invested in Bellethorpe remaining this small town, rejecting any development and progress that might bring more people and that might change the ‘feel’ of it. Noah in general, seems upset with change and he doesn’t react well to Ava purchasing the house he dreamed of buying, even though Ava knew nothing about it.
Ava hires Noah to help renovate the house and this allows them to overcome their rocky start and get to know each other. There’s definite attraction there but there are also so complications too. Ava makes a fascinating discovery on her land which is incredibly interesting, especially for Ava both personally and professionally but it also brings about both of their worst (very different) fears and will need to be handled delicately. There were times when Noah frustrated me and I think the book did a good job of showcasing his frustration with the situation and look, it was unfair but it was always going to be unfair to someone, unfortunately, whether that be Noah or his former wife, etc. She was the primary caregiver, she had made arrangements to get herself some support and a ‘village’ I guess. That doesn’t mean that I didn’t sympathise with his problem, I did. I did think it was unfair she was able to move the child away from him without helping to shoulder any of the responsibility of travel or helping facilitate a better form of shared custody other than Noah just having to drive to her every second weekend. He and Ava were always going to have a difference of opinions on one issue in particular but I did feel like Noah was very black and white in his original reaction.
I did feel like the resolution of Ava’s issue was a bit….idyllic. I’m not saying that it couldn’t happen but it did feel like it was this sort of dream scenario in the end, the best possible outcome for her. Which is good, for Ava but given the background information and the situation she’d fled, it did feel a bit like it was a lot of build up for not much happening in the end. It didn’t really affect my enjoyment of the book, as I was looking for a gentler, less stressful story anyway but it was something that I noticed.
I did enjoy this and I feel like I will read the other books in the series. They seem perfect for when I do want a gentle, rural-based read with a sweet romance in a great setting.
8/10
Book #110 of 2024
All The Books I Can Read 
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