Title:  Falling Hard
Series:  Falling For The Freemans #2
Author:  Kate Hewitt
Genre:  Contemporary Romance
Published:  March 10, 2016
Publisher:  Tule Publishing
My Rating:  4.5 stars
Source:  Owned, Kindle Edition
Cover Description:

Quinn Freeman has spent his life avoiding the dangers of commitment, but his reluctant return to his home town that’s in tragedy for his family stirs up memories and emotions he’d intended to leave buried. His arrival lights hope in many hearts including one long dormant.

Meghan O’Reilly, the town’s only plumber and solo caretaker of her dependent sister, is weighted down with responsibility. She only sees in Quinn a careless charmer who isn’t used to hard work—but she still can’t keep from imagining his kiss… and longing for his touch.

Surely some things, like a fling between them, can be simple… Or is it possible for a fling to become forever?

Read on for my thoughts on Falling Hard.  No true spoilers, promise.

Once upon a time, the tiny town of Creighton Falls was flourishing thanks in large part to the luxury hotel that graced the town.  The hotel provided jobs for the local townsfolk, helped support the many small business on the main streets by bringing in tourists and travelers to their tiny town and giving them shelter as they wandered through.  Life was good – until one winter’s day when one accident changed so many lives.  Now Creighton Falls is a ghost town, the businesses barely holding on and others having closed their doors.  All in part due to one luxury hotel and the family that ran it experiencing a tragedy so great that no one could stay where they lost a husband and a father again.

Now after all these years, a Freeman is back in Creighton Falls.  Quinn, the youngest son and the most involved in that life changing accident is back to clear out the now old, falling down hotel to get it ready for sale.  Quinn has no memory of the accident that took his father’s life, even though he was right there beside him.  All of his memories before the age of six are simply gone, and coming back here at his mother’s request was the absolute last thing he wanted to do.

Meghan answered the emergency request for a plumber, hardly believing her eyes at the address.  Someone was at the old hotel?  As she dealt with the problem and met the person who was here to clean up the place and get it ready for sale – her anger, her emotions got the best of her and she let Quinn Freeman know exactly what she though of his family abandoning the town and now giving up on the hotel for good.  Meghan and Quinn were the same age, she lived through the years after his family simply left town.  She’d watched her home town slowly fade away, watched the lives that were affected by no jobs, no hope.  No, in her minds the Freemans had a lot to answer for.

Falling Hard is such an emotional story.  Yes, we have a charming romance brewing between the woman who holds more responsibility than anyone her age should and the young man who sees himself as a perpetual screw-up because his family has written him off, in his mind because the accident that killed his, their father was his fault.  Watching these two people change their mindsets, learn from past mistakes and grow into two very different people was a delightful experience.  I cannot say this story is just a good old fashioned romance, it’s not.  There are deep issues here and they are handled with grace and understanding.  It is a story that will likely stick with the reader for awhile as we ask ourselves how would we have coped.  But it is a moving, realistic romance where life happens and how we deal with the fallout determines what type of person we truly are.

I’d highly recommend this story for anyone who loves a good solid story with depth.  One that makes you think, makes you feel.  Those types of readers will enjoy Falling Hard the most.

Available for the Kindle