Our final visit to the small (fictional) Oregon town of Safe Harbor brings with it the story of the couple who have been in the background of the previous books – Sam Bookman, who is, in many ways, the heart of the Safe Harbor community, and Worth Stapleton, who hasn’t been back in decades, and whose life is crumbling about his ears. I’ve been looking forward to Find Me Worthy, to watching Worth coming home and finding his place in the world, and to watching Sam finally snagging the man of his dreams, and the author has done them proud with a deeply emotional story about grief, loss and sadness, and the struggle to find a way out of the darkness.

Worth left his small home town to attend college and then stayed away in the attempt to escape its associated memories after his mother disappeared and his father was suspected of her murder. When the news broke – courtesy of the investigation by his friends Holden and Monroe – that his mother had been the victim of a serial killer two decades earlier, and that her remains had finally been found, a weight of guilt crashed over him – for having left, for having believed that his late father was responsible – and then the life he’d made for himself in the city fell apart when it emerged that the investment company he worked for was embezzling funds and cheating customers. Already reeling from the revelations about his family, the loss of everything he had worked for together with the suspicions raised about his involvement in the shady financial dealings have pushed Worth to the edge. Broke, evicted and disgraced – even though the investigation proved him innocent of any wrongdoing, his reputation is in tatters – he does the only think he can think of, and goes back to his childhood home – to say goodbye.

Sam is surprised, to say the least, to find Worth sitting beneath the massive oak tree in the front yard of his childhood home – the house that Sam now owns, purchased with a view for providing shelter for at-risk teens and perhaps, one day, housing a family of his own. He had a massive crush on Worth when he was younger, and has been one of the few people to keep in touch with him since he left town. He recognises that while he’s grown out of his crush, his feelings for Worth have never gone away, and seeing Worth sitting beneath that tree looking so worn-down and hopeless, Sam determines to do whatever he can to help Worth to find himself again, to find purpose, to realise he’s loved and that yes, he is worthy of happiness and all the good things life has to offer.

Annabeth Albert does a superb job when it comes to conveying everything Worth is going through – the apathy, the lack of drive, the confusion and the certainty that nothing is ever going to be right with the world again – and I dare say that anyone who has experienced depression and how very debilitating it can be will recognise his pain and fragility. And luckily for Worth, Sam recognises it, too, and sets about coaxing him back from that metaphorical ledge.

Find Me Worthy is a heartfelt and steamy hurt/comfort romance that, like the other books in the series, focuses on finding home and family, forgiveness and trusting in yourself and the people around you. I liked seeing just how valued Sam is within the community; he’s caring, thoughtful, and supportive, one of those people who genuinely make a difference in life by just being who they are. I have to say, however, that for most of the book, he seems just a little too perfect (it’s easy to see why he’s been nicknamed “Saint Sam”); his background in social work has equipped him with the tools to be able to provide very specific help to Worth, finding him the right medical care and the other support he needs, and he’s very good at knowing when to push and when to step back – so it’s not until near the end that we get to see that he has his flaws, too. He’s become so used to putting other peoples’ needs first that he fails to take his own into account and to let people care for him, and lets his attachment to Safe Harbor blind him to the fact that Worth might not feel the same way about the place.

Sam and Worth’s romance is full of tenderness, care and affection, although I wasn’t completely convinced by the way they initally get together. Like the previous book, there’s a light element of kink (Worth likes to serve and Sam is only too happy to praise and care for him) – although I couldn’t help thinking that maybe becoming sexually intimate with someone you only recently had to talk out of harming himself wasn’t quite the way to go so soon.

I realise this is a completely personal thing, but I really didn’t care for the scenes that depict the characters as regular Sunday churchgoers. It makes sense for Sam – his dad is the pastor or whatever, and he’s been brought up to it – but I don’t recall Monroe or Holden and their respective other halves going to church in their books, so seeing them there just didn’t sit right. Plus I almost felt as though Worth was guilted into going, and that bothered me. (Let’s leave the churchgoing to the inspys, because then I can avoid reading about it!)

I did, however, appreciate the way the author uses one fairly small scene to remind us all that crime isn’t victimless and that the people involved are people with real feelings and not just commodities to be gossiped about, when a true crime ‘tourist’ fetches up in Safe Harbor and basically starts fangirling Worth because his mother was murdered by a serial killer. It is, sadly, all too believable.

Reservations aside, Find Me Worthy is an emotionally complex story that will tug at the heartstrings as Worth struggles to believe that he matters – not just to Sam and his friends, but to himself enough to want to take that long, difficult road back to being the man he was meant to be. I liked seeing Worth slowly regaining his confidence and sense of self, and there’s a nice sub-plot about Sam’s fight to save his non-profit coffee shop, plus a sweet epilogue that sees Sam and Worth achieving a long-held dream. Find Me Worthy is a fitting farewell to Safe Harbor and the men who have found love, life and home there.