When Wren Fraser is eight months pregnant, her controlling boyfriend, James Miner, hits her and then kicks her in the stomach. Since this is the first time he has done this, she accepts his promises that he will get counseling and that this will never happen again. A few days later she realizes that she made an immense mistake. It takes almost a month to find a way to leave, since James is very suspicious, but she manages to escape Seattle and is now in Arkansas, hoping to find safety with a college roommate and her husband.

She attributes her back pain to tension and being in the car driving too long. Not knowing the countryside or the way to her friend’s home and with visibility limited due to the torrential downpour, Wren’s car is suddenly swamped by high water. Panicking, she realizes that unless she gets her car started, there is a good possibility that she will drown since her electric windows are up. Luckily she is able to get out of the car, evade the treacherous current, and find shelter in an abandoned house. She feels safe for a while until she realizes that her back pain is labor.

Alec Harper has always wanted to be a cop. However, after his job cost him his family and kids, he questions his priorities. While he doesn’t give up his career, when his mother is diagnosed with terminal cancer he moves from St. Louis to Arkansas and takes a job in the sheriff’s department as a detective in order to help care for her. This causes him to wonder if could have made a difference had he been around and doing things like making sure his mother had regular checkups, catching the cancer earlier instead of too late, or preventing his sister from marrying such a loser.

Still no matter how much he feels compelled to serve, the flooding that Arkansas is experiencing has taken a toll on him. He has been out on the water for over 36 hours in a borrowed aluminum boat, helping others to safety. Reaching his limit he finally breaks down and sleeps for a couple of hours but then he is once again back on the water. He almost skips the old Maynard’s house, since he knows the owner is in a nursing home, but his conscience won’t let him. After discovering a woman in labor, he realises that he won’t be able to get her into his boat, so he joins her and in the process loses his radio.

The intimacy of birth and their forced seclusion forges a bond between Wren and Alec. Wren in fact wishes that Alec was her child’s father. After their rescue, and a checkup for both new baby and mother, Wren plans on staying at a shelter, but Alec won’t hear of it and convinces her to stay with him in his home. Soon Wren is serving home cooked meals for Alec as a way of repayment and their relationship grows from friendship to more.

This first portion of the book is extremely well written and believable as Wren saves herself from drowning and then finds shelter; the same with Alec’s scenes as he works to save individuals in peril. Although I do hope that in real life, rescue personnel are more concerned with the living than the dead contrary to what is depicted in this book. The time that they both spend together during the birth and how they rummage for supplies, and then make do with what little there is seems realistic as does their situational intimacy. However, once the relationship moves from professional to personal, numerous scenarios raise little red flags.

Before I address that, let me say while I can understand the urgency of getting away from a controlling partner, driving across country without even knowing if the individual you want to seek shelter with still lives in the same place definitely makes this heroine TSTL for me. I could easily comprehend getting away, but making contact before simply showing up would have made more sense, especially since Wren hasn’t spoken to her ex-college roommate for over a year. Plus she seems quite naive about James’ knowledge of her friend and almost cavalier about bringing the potential danger to her. Maybe I have just read about too many real life scenarios gone bad or watched too many movies.

Wren and Alec’s relationship progresses at a rapid pace. Wren goes from living with her boyfriend, then leaving him and in a matter of days, giving birth and living with Alec. The basis of Wren’s infatuation is formed under a highly stressful and emotional time. Plus, I just can’t suspend belief that a person who has been in abusive relationship is psychologically capable of regaining her self-esteem and making a commitment to another person within a six month period. There are reasons that individuals are unable to create boundaries and draw the line on unacceptable behavior, and change doesn’t happen overnight.

Speaking of boundaries, I know that people in law enforcement, like individuals in the medical field, are counseled on maintaining professional distance. While I think it is very kind that Alec wants to help Wren in offering her a place to stay, later it seems that he encourages a sense of dependency which hardly seems acceptable behavior for someone in his position. Add into that mixture Alec’s overblown sense of responsibility, his sense of guilt over his mother’s death and the end of his marriage, and I just don’t believe that enough time has passed for these two individuals to really know if they are in love or not. So while Wren and Alec might be perfect matches, the timing caused major problems for me.

I enjoyed Ms. Johnson’s storytelling. She is a talented and accomplished writer, but I just couldn’t believe in the story, since it seems more of a fairytale of two damaged people finding each other. If this is a favorite trope of yours, then you should enjoy it more than I did.