Childhood tragedy left Koa Burgard with many scars. Reclusive and still healing, he is sent to summer camp, where the other kids tease and bully him. All except outgoing and popular Jersey Reid. A boy who dreams about being a hockey star. A tentative friendship forms. Every summer, they reconnect for adventure. Every winter, they write letters back and forth.
Promises are made, and promises are shattered.
Thirty years later, the sudden death of his parents brings Jersey home. Rotten things keep happening. His life has been full of torment and pain, and he can’t remember a time when he was happy.
Will it ever stop?
Cleaning out his deceased parents’ house, he uncovers Koa’s pen pal letters. Can Jersey recapture the happiness and innocence of youth by reconnecting with the strange, quirky boy he befriended at camp so long ago? Or will his prior mistakes be a barrier?
Although Koa is now a respectable English teacher at an elite boarding school, Jersey quickly learns that the boy from camp has darker secrets than he ever imagined.
Koa has given up on happiness. His views on life are bleak and disturbing, and he’s learned it’s better to be alone in an unforgiving world.
Jersey’s return offsets Koa’s balance and brings the past back into focus. A past he’s spent a lifetime trying to forget.
But Jersey was Koa’s savior once. He was kind when no one else was. Jersey made him feel safe in an unsafe world.
Until Jersey broke a promise.
And promises are supposed to be for forever.
Comment: In 2023 I've read a book by this author that I liked and I thought I'd try something else but time just went by and I didn't. Some months ago, I've read a positive review on this book, memories of the other book came back and voilá, I've decided to read this one.
In this story we meet Jersey, a man who has his life back on track after an injury finished his hockey career and dependence on pills ended his marriage and the connection with his son and parents. He now works as a physiotherapist and is back to his parents' house, after their death, to deal with things. He finds his childhood letters to and from pen pal Koa, whom he had met at summer camp. Koa has always been weird but their friendship was strong until one moment ended it all too. Now, Jersey wants to make amends and seeks Koa, who is a teacher at an elite boarding school. Koa is wary of reconnecting, he lives with the notion happiness isn't real and he fears Jersey will disrupt his routines. But their summers were, indeed, special... is there a way for them to go back to those emotions?
I already had the impression this author writes about complex characters who deal with specific conditions or have specific conditions somehow (it seems all are related to some kind of trauma), which makes her stories a lot more dramatic and layered than what one would think. Both Koa and Jersey faced quite the challenges but the focus is on Koa and his mental state, although Jersey certainly faced his own troubles.
As it happened with my experience of reading the other book, so did this one feel engaging and stimulating but the development dragged several times, to my personal taste. I think this seemed to happen due to the fact the story is told by both Koa and Jersey but not in an linear process. The action is set on the present time, while Jersey and Koa reconnect, but we also have several chapters in between others set in the past, during the years they were at summer camp.
Obviously, this set up was planned so that we could see how the boys met and bonded, how their relationship and friendship blossomed, although Jersey could not always understand Koa, who had suffered a huge trauma and whose grandfather wasn't caring nor really supportive of his issues. Jersey is a child so he cannot be fully aware of what his questions and actions mean to Koa - Jersey does make some unintended mistakes - but his is there, nonetheless. I mean, these chapters were cute and all that but they were also too many. I don't think I gained that much as a reader by having such lengthy boyhood chapters, which were kind of repetitive, until the last one.
We know from the start that Jersey made promises he didn't fulfill, and that something happened between them to end their friendship - it's very obvious what - but now, as adults, Jersey wants to reconnect and so he looks for Koa, makes a contact and they start talking again. Usually, I prefer plots to focus on the now of whatever situation the characters face, even if they have past things to deal with, because what happened cannot be changed anyway. I was eager to follow the guys and see them falling in love after so many years apart.
The romance was slow, which is fine and understandable, but I wasn't fully convinced by things because, to me, the author took too long setting up stuff, establishing connections, explaining the past and how things got there that, when the actual romance is acknowledged, I was already a little tired of waiting. I mean, it's certainly good that Jersey respected Koa and all that, and the reason behind Koa's trauma is clearly a valid and monumental one, but... the tension rising and rising too so long that when things finally cleared out and the guys could be an established couple, the ratio just didn't match.
So many pages with tension mounting and the HEA was so quick, with the both of them dealing with past issues in a way that felt rushed. I would have preferred less time setting up and more time admitting the happiness and the steps to solve some of the issues from their pasts: Koa's mental anguish and trauma into accepting healing, and Jersey's reconnecting with his estranged son. These two elements almost felt like secondary consequences, and I think they should have been more prioritized.
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