Only Rivals by Charity Ferrell

This book had me rivetted from the start, and I absolutely couldn’t get enough of this enemies to lovers/second-chance romance. It’s a complex love story that you’re not going to want to miss.

Jax and Amelia have known each other all their lives, and they’ve always had a rivalry between them. They loved to goad one another as kids, but now things have gone way further. The issue? Jax’s best friend and Amelia’s fiancé, Christopher, is gone now way too young. Both are struggling with his death, and Jax blames Amelia for it. Complicated doesn’t even begin to explain Jax and Amelia’s life-long relationship of push and pull, and it all starts to come to a head when they find out that Amelia is now equal partners with Jax in his and Christopher’s brewery per Christopher’s will. They’re forced to deal with each other, and little by little old secrets come out.

Literally from the first couple pages, this book pulls at your heartstrings. It’s more than a love story between two people that have been at odds with one another all their lives. It’s a tale of what happens to the people left behind when the someone they’ve loved so fiercely leaves them in such an awful way. There’s a tremendous amount of guilt and misplaced blame on both Jax and Amelia’s parts, and that complicates an already complicated situation. I adored these two characters even when I got frustrated with them. I love how nothing about Jax and Amelia’s relationship is straightforward, and the angst level throughout the book is off the charts and lends to the gravity of it all. Their journey was beyond complicated, and I loved the evolution of them as individuals and how their relationship transformed over the course of the book.

This book is extremely well written, too. Not only did Ferrell construct characters and the world they live in in such a captivating way, but she did it in such a way that the difficulties that Jax and Amelia go through are fully thought out and explained. By skillfully using flashbacks throughout the book, we get a better understanding of their motivations and why everything has played out the way it has. Every bit of this book is deliberate, and I loved seeing how Jax and Amelia’s story played out.

I cannot tell you enough how much I loved this book. It’s complicated, greatly emotional, and deals with some difficult subject matter, but there’s quick-witted banter and love in its pages, too. This book is going to stick with me for sure, and I wholeheartedly recommend it.

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