Booklist Reviews 2019 June #1

*Starred Review* Cassie Hanwell has never forgiven her mother, Diana, for leaving her and her father on Cassie's sixteenth birthday. So, a decade later, when Diana calls to tell Cassie that she's lost her vision in one eye and asks Cassie to move across the country to take care of her, Cassie is anything but eager. Now a firefighter in Austin, Cassie loves her job and her team until a run-in with the man who assaulted her on the night her mother left costs her both. Cassie reluctantly moves in with Diana and is forced to start over with a new fire department, one more sexist and backward-thinking than the one she came from. And then the worst thing in the world happens. Cassie, who has spent her adult life avoiding romantic attachments, falls head over heels for the handsome rookie at the station. The follow-up to Center's breakout hit, How to Walk Away (2018), in which Cassie had a brief cameo, has all the hallmarks that made readers fall in love with the previous book: an appealing (if guarded, in this case) heroine, a compelling love story, a tearjerking twist, and a thoroughly absorbing story. Another winner from Center. Copyright 2019 Booklist Reviews.