I will admit that if you show me a video of a soldier coming home, I will cry almost every time. A few years ago when Folger’s Coffee released that commercial of the soldier coming home for Christmas I cried. I am not personally connected with many soldiers who have been overseas, but I have the utmost respect for them and what they come home to deal with. Naturally when I read the description for this novel I was intrigued. A soldier, Spence Lang, pronounced dead in Afghanistan returns home to his small town to find the woman he loves getting ready to marry a war buddy of his while an old acquaintance of his, Melanie Wolfe, makes it her duty to take care of him and gives him a place to say.

Spence Lang is an angry man and justifiably so. His parents died when he was younger, and he was raised by an alcoholic uncle. He enlisted in the army and was deployed to Afghanistan where he and his buddies, Nick and Leif, all suffered from a surprise bomb explosion – an explosion the supposedly sent Spence to his grave. When he returns to the town he grew up in one of the first things he sees is his own gravestone and there he runs into his old acquaintance, Melanie, who is seeing her recently departed father’s headstone. Spence knows it is the day of the wedding of his old love Callie and his army buddy Nick, and he and Melanie go together where Spence’s rage comes to a head.

When Spence retreats to solve his problems with alcohol, Melanie takes it upon herself to follow him and keep him safe, subsequently taking him home. The next day out of kindness and the fact that she used to have a big crush on him, Melanie invites him to rent the housekeeper’s cottage on her family’s property and offers him a job at her family’s ailing business. Melanie struggles with being in charge of her family’s big business after years of being a librarian, she soon discovers her father hadn’t been financially responsible and the company was failing. Spence is angry at everyone but Melanie it seems, and refuses to sit down and talk with his old friends, leaving Melanie in the middle. Despite this though, Melanie and Spence grow closer, their friendship grows and then blossoming into love in a really believable way.

This book was cute. I was tempted to give it a lower rating but I realized that was because of my own personal preference as far as male protagonists are concerned. There is nothing wrong with Spence really, but I had trouble warming to him. I totally understood how much stress and hurt he was going through, but he was just a little too angry for my personal taste. I also just have a personal issue with people who don’t confront issues head on because I feel like that just perpetuates a problem. This pattern of evasiveness does eventually change, but not till over halfway through the novel. Just to be clear, Spence is dealing with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder; it would have been nice to see this explored more in the novel.

The best part of this book was Melanie, hands down. She was lovely, and not in a Mary Jane-too perfect kind of way. She was really believable as a person. She was going through a lot but despite all of that she realized that what Spence was going through was incredibly difficult and despite the personal ties and difficulties surrounding his return, she always stood up for him completely. Aside from her feelings for him, I believe Melanie just really had a good heart because she did sacrifice a lot to take care of him when no one else seemed to really be seeing to his needs.

Spence and Melanie are adorable together and their progression into more-than-friends is incredibly believable. The love scenes are really sexy and other moments between them leading up to and after their consummation are filled with delicious sexual tension. The ultimate resolution of every situation in the book is satisfying. Overall, I found the book quite good despite the fact that Spence wasn’t my favorite protagonist and the character development for him drags a little bit. This book is definitely a nice summer’s day read, guaranteed to give you all those good romance feels.