🎧 Reviewed by LD | Rating: 4.1/5 | Steam: 🔥🔥🔥
⚠️ This is a full spoiler review. If you haven’t read It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time yet — go read it first. We’ll be here when you’re done.
The Opening
A second chance romance between a woman and her dad’s business partner — fifteen years her senior, someone she’s known since she was a teenager. The premise is complicated before the first page even turns, and the book leans into that complication rather than glossing over it. Your mileage will vary significantly depending on how you feel about age gaps.
The Full Story — Spoilers Included
The Backstory
Adele spent summers at her father’s house in Australia as a teenager, and during those summers she and Pete — her dad’s close friend and eventually, business partner — developed a genuine friendship. Pete is fifteen years older. He’s thirty-one when she’s sixteen. He brings her along as a third wheel on dates, takes her stargazing late at night, and is, by most reasonable measures, closer to her than is entirely appropriate given the gap. Whether he ever fully clocked what he was doing or not, the dynamic he created left Adele with a years-long crush she couldn’t shake.
At her eighteenth birthday party, fueled by alcohol and what felt like years of mixed signals, she made a move. Pete turned her down. Her father walked in mid-rejection, misread the situation entirely, and punched Pete hard enough to break his nose. The fallout nearly destroyed the business relationship. Adele, mortified and effectively banished from her father’s orbit, left and stayed away for seven years.
Present Day
Adele is twenty-five now. She’s driving back for her dad’s wedding, and because accommodation is tight, she ends up staying at Pete’s house — which, given the history, is a choice. Pete isn’t thrilled about it either, but her dad asked and he felt obligated.
The moment she sees Pete, everything she’d managed to put away for seven years comes rushing back. And this time the attraction isn’t one-sided. Pete sees her as a fully grown adult — which she is — but the fifteen-year gap hasn’t changed, and the history between them, the friendship, the fallout, the dad standing ten feet away at any given moment — none of that has changed either.
At the wedding, Pete’s date Leona corners Adele trying to fish for information about him — why he’s so closed off, why he never talks about his family. Adele gets annoyed, tells Pete about it, and Pete promptly ends things with Leona. Leona, drunk and furious, blames Adele and demands to go home. Adele obliges — driving over an hour away, over an hour back, a very long wait for a cab — and arrives back at Pete’s house well into the early hours to find him sitting in the dark.
She tells him she’s leaving in the morning. She’s going home to sleep with every available man she can find until someone does it for her. She goes to give him a goodbye peck on the lips. He turns it into something else entirely.
The Affair
They begin a secret relationship — secret because her dad cannot find out, not after what happened seven years ago. Pete runs hot and cold throughout, pulling her close and then retreating, guilty about the age gap, guilty about the loyalty to her father, not willing to name what this is or commit to what it could become. Adele, who has grown into someone who knows exactly what she wants and what she won’t settle for, refuses to be a convenient arrangement. She wants all of it or nothing.
The admin at Pete and her dad’s firm has a heart attack while the dad is on his honeymoon, which means Adele steps in to cover — just her and Pete, alone in the office every day. They have a lot of sex. Her dad comes home early from the honeymoon worried about the firm and walks in on Pete going down on Adele.
His new wife Shaunte’s reaction? “Really, I’m not surprised at all.”
Her dad’s reaction is less measured. Pete, faced with the full weight of her father’s fury and his own guilt, folds. He tells Adele this is his life, he can’t mess it up, and essentially walks away. Adele, still working at the company, still showing up every day, refuses to be invisible about it. Flowers arrive — she assumes they’re from Pete and puts them back on his desk in a fury. They’re from Jeremy, someone Shaunte was trying to set her up with. Pete looks genuinely confused.
Shaunte, who is the real MVP of this entire book, eventually makes an impassioned speech at dinner about Pete being a coward (in a roundabout way) and Adele deserving someone who actually appreciates her. Adele goes back to Pete’s house and tells him to get his head out of his backside. He refuses. She leaves.
The Tree Incident
Back at her dad’s, Adele decides to climb the tree up to her old bedroom window. The tree breaks. She falls on Pete, who was apparently standing beneath it. Pete ends up with mild damage and a concussion. Adele fractures her ulna. Her dad decides it is time for her to leave and buys her a ticket back to Sydney and sends her home — the broken arm means she can’t drive anyway, so her car stays behind. Pete doesn’t even say goodbye.
The Pregnancy
The day she gets her cast off, back home, Adele’s best friend hands her a gift. A pregnancy test. Adele sits in the bathroom for over two hours without looking at the results — because if you don’t look, it doesn’t count, right?
Pete shows up to deliver her car. He drove the whole way down. He tells her he would help raise the baby if she wanted, that he wants her to move back and take the job her dad offered. She finally looks at the test.
Positive.
He stays a week and a half while she wraps things up, buys her a new car because he doesn’t trust the old one, gets her packed, and brings her back. He asks her to move into his room. She declines and says she needs her own place. He says he missed her. She says that’s nice but she’s not moving into his bedroom on the strength of a “missed her” and a surprise pregnancy.
She stays at her dad’s temporarily. Her dad and Shaunte have extremely audible newlywed sex. So of course, she ends up on Pete’s couch.
The Ending
Pete shows up at work one day walking in on his own dad going after Adele for the pregnancy, stands up for her, and then disappears for the rest of the day. Adele falls asleep on his porch waiting. When he finally comes back he tells her he’s made a decision: he’ll just date her. She can have her own place. They’ll work on being them.
Their first official date lasts only a few minutes while driving in the car before Pete hears she’s found her own apartment and completely loses his mind. He takes her back to her dad’s house — she thinks he’s dumping her — and proceeds to tell her father, in the kitchen, with Shaunte present, that he is not going to date Adele. He is going to marry her. Because he loves her. And he knows if he asks her now she’ll say no because she wants to go slowly, but he is not letting the woman he loves, who is carrying his baby, move into her own apartment.
Shaunte, calmly, points out that Adele is actually in the room and may not be aware that he loves her. Has he told her that?
Adele also tells him that he can ask her to marry him, not demand.
He asks. She says yes. They get married a month later.
Best Part of This Book
Shaunte. The kitchen confession scene. Pete finally saying what he means out loud, with witnesses.
Worst Part of This Book
The flashbacks. The dynamic that started when Adele was sixteen. The way the book asks you to find it romantic without fully reckoning with what it was.
The Steam Rating Breakdown
🔥🔥🔥 — Present and explicit enough, though the emotional tension does more heavy lifting than the actual heat.
The Ending — Satisfied or Disappointed?
Satisfied with the ending specifically — Shaunte’s role in getting Pete to pull his head out and actually say what he means is genuinely great, and the kitchen confession scene lands well. Getting there was complicated.
Would I Reread It?
Yes — already have. Though I struggled with parts of it both times.
The Hot Take
Fifteen years is a lot. And it’s one thing when two adults meet and there’s a gap — that’s their business. It’s another thing entirely when those two adults spent years in a quasi-friendship that started when one of them was sixteen. The flashbacks made me genuinely uncomfortable, and I don’t think I’m wrong about that.
Who Is This For
Readers who can set aside age gap concerns and focus on the second chance romance — the longing, the history, the complicated family dynamics. If large age gaps are a hard no for you, or if the idea of a years-long dynamic that started when one party was a teenager doesn’t sit right, this one is going to be a rough listen regardless of how the ending lands.
Where to Get This Book
📖 Physical Book
Amazon.ca | Amazon.com
📱 Ebook
Kindle .ca | Kindle .com
🎧 Audiobook
Audible Canada | Audible US | Libro.fm
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Plot Twisted. 🔥