Kristie J’s review of How the Light Gets In (Cracks Duet, Book 2) by L.H. Cosway
Contemporary Romance published by Create Space 18 Feb 18

I am so glad these books came out within days of each other, because I would have gone nuts if I had to wait weeks or months.  The first book ended with the parting of Evelyn and Dylan.  They were young and still very much in love with each other, but they were on different paths.  When this book opens, it’s eleven years later.  Since her grandmother passed, Evelyn no longer had to stay to take care of her and has moved to New York to once again live with her much loved aunt, Yvonne.  Yvonne is the manager of a restaurant/bar and Evelyn is working there.  She has come back somewhat from the tragedy that occurred years ago, but she’s not all the way back.  There is still a huge missing piece of her heart that she gave to Dylan many years ago, and, while she’s moved on in some ways, he still holds a large piece of her.

She is stunned, therefore, when he happens to come into the restaurant she works in.  He is in the same place emotionally as Evelyn is.  He’s moved on, had relationships, but his heart is still with Evelyn.  He has now reached the potential he showed early on.  He’s developed some very much loved perfumes and is now wealthy and famous.  As soon as he sees Evelyn, he desperately wants her back in his life.  She is reluctant, though.  They are on two very different levels and she’s not sure anymore that she is the best person for him.  But Dylan KNOWS that she is and begins a gentle wooing while showing her that everything he has become is because of her.

There’s also a bonus romance that began way back in the first book between Yvonne and Dylan’s best friend Connor.

As with the first book and all other of Ms. Cosway’s works, this is a beautiful and unique romance.  It’s wonderful to see Evelyn and Dylan working so hard to get their well-deserved HEA.  I said in the review of the first book that Ms. Cosway’s books have almost a lyrical style to them, a richness that seems to bring the characters to life and she continues this with How the Light Gets In.  These books, which go together, cement further the love I have for this author.

Grade: A

Summary:

He came back to me 16 minutes and 59 seconds into Beethoven’s Symphony no. 7.

We parted amid tragedy, so it seemed poetic. Dylan O’Dea, my childhood sweetheart, had once meant everything to me. Now we were strangers, and honestly, after eleven years I never thought I’d see him again.

I lived in the world of the average, of getting paid by the hour and budgeting to make ends meet. But Dylan, he lived in the world of wealth and success. He’d achieved the great things I always suspected he would. The dissatisfaction he’d felt as a teenager had obviously been an excellent motivator.

He started a business from scratch, pioneered a brand, and created perfumes adored by women across the globe. I was just one of the people who’d been there before. Now he was living his best life in the after.

And me, well, I’d been in a dark place for a while. Slowly but surely, I was letting the light back in, but there was something missing. I was an unfinished sentence with an ellipsis at the end. And maybe, if I was brave enough to take the chance, Dylan could be my happy ending.

No excerpt available.

Other books in this series: