Book 5 in the Windy City series
Reviewed by CJ | Rating: 4.25/5 | Steam: 🔥🔥🔥🔥
📖🎧
⚠️ This is a full spoiler review. If you haven’t read Rewind It Back yet — go read it first. We’ll be here when you’re done.
OPENING HOOK
Childhood best friends turned first love turned I hate you turned “we haven’t spoken in six years and now I’m stuck living next door to and working with you”. Rio and Hallie had me hooked from the beginning.
THE FULL STORY — SPOILERS INCLUDED
Rio’s an NHL player in Chicago. Hallie just moved to the city for an internship with a design firm she’s dreamed about for years, except she’s also drowning in debt from lying to her dying dad about a “fully covered” medical trial that was definitely not even partially covered. She’s been working days at the design firm and nights bartending just to keep her head above water.
She makes a friend, Wren, whose big brother (also a pro athlete) bought her a house to live in while she’s in school. Hallie does the interior design on it in exchange for a place to stay — and moves in right next door to Rio.
Rio and Hallie were the real deal as kids. Best friends from the moment they met at eleven and twelve, then the actual first love kind of couple, although they hid most of that from everyone around them because they were unsure of how they would react. Their families lived in attached houses and basically one big extended family until it was all ripped apart. As Rio was being drafted into the NHL and Hallie was making plans to follow him and go to college, Hallie found out her mom was sleeping with Rio’s dad, and she sat on that secret for a couple of weeks because at the exact same time, she found out that her own dad was sick with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and it was a lot to process. When she caught her mom with Rio’s dad, she told Hallie that saying anything about the affair would make him depressed and sicker, leaving her in an impossible position. A nineteen-year-old, already being crushed by her dad’s diagnosis and huge life changes, froze.
When the affair came out, Rio’s mom found out that Hallie knew and felt completely betrayed. She’d been like a daughter to her and that hurt as much as what her mother had done. Rio left for without a word and Hallie never forgave him for leaving right when she needed him most, on top of her mom taking off and her dad fighting for his life.
Six years later, they’re neighbours again. He he hates her for keeping the secret that destroyed his family and She’s still angry that he abandoned her. That anger starts to melt away as familiarity and affection for each other comes back; here’s the part I loved most — once they actually decide they want to try again, they don’t fight it for another 200 pages. There’s a little bit of “I’m still so angry with you but I can’t hate you,” but it doesn’t drag it out. They start finding their way back as all of this missed information comes out. Rio has to sit with what he did to her by leaving once he learns what she was actually going through, and Hallie has to work through the guilt of not telling him and his mom sooner, even though it wasn’t malicious, it was a scared kid who’d just been told the truth would make her dad worse. And the mixtapes and the rooftop stuff from when they were teenagers, woven all the way through the book? That made it so much sweeter.
BEST PART OF THIS BOOK
Watching the affection and the devotion between them come back easily. No dramatic will-they-won’t-they games once they’d decided. That’s rare in romance books and I actively seek it out, if you haven’t noticed.
WORST PART OF THIS BOOK
The thing that gets me about misunderstanding-driven plots is usually it’s just two people who won’t have a conversation like adults. This wasn’t that. It was a bit, tangled knot of circumstances that broke them apart, and that’s far more heartbreaking rather than frustrating.
THE STEAM RATING BREAKDOWN
- 🔥🔥🔥🔥 — open door, and it’s spicy
- Romance is fully central to the plot, this isn’t a subplot
- Content warnings: parental illness/cancer, infidelity, family estrangement
THE TWIST WE DIDN’T SEE COMING
We knew something big split them up, and the book implies early that it was more than a regular parting of way. I was fully expecting a pregnancy-after-he-left storyline, or one-thought-they-saw-the-other-cheating type of backstory, or something along those lines. But her mom sleeping with his dad? Did not see that coming, especially with how close those two families were.
THE CHARACTER WE LOVED TO HATE
Hallie’s mom. She’s a non-entity through the book with little page time or dialogue and she is still somehow so easy to hate. Sounds like a selfish dick, honestly.
THE ENDING — SATISFIED OR DISAPPOINTED?
Very satisfied. This also wraps up the series, so a lot of previous characters show up, which was a nice touch even without having read those books.
WOULD WE REREAD IT?
I’d relisten for sure. Megan Wicks and Connor Crais were fantastic narrators, and audio is always my pick for rereads. I get distracted a more easily when listening versus the ebook or phisical copy, so I save audio for when I’m trapped alone and can’t escape (like in a car or standing at the sink doing dishes) or for rereads like this when I can afford to miss a few lines here and there if I see something shiny or a cute dog outside snags my attention.
WHO IS THIS FOR
Second chance romance fans, childhood-friends-to-forever fans, and if you’ve read the rest of the Windy City series first, I can’t imagine missing this one.
WHERE TO GET THIS BOOK
📖 Physical Book
|
🎧 Audiobook
|
📱 Ebook
🎁 New to Audible?
🎁 New to Libro.fm?
📚 More from the Windy City series
Book 1 — Not yet reviewed
Book 2 — Not yet reviewed
Book 3 — Not yet reviewed
Book 4 — Not yet reviewed
Book 5 — Rewind It Back | Reviewed by CJ | ⭐ 4.25/5 | Steam: 🔥🔥🔥🔥 — [Read the Review]
Plot Twisted. 🔥
📖🎧 | Series: Windy City Book 5 | Genre: Romance | Steam: 🔥🔥🔥🔥