So, I’d heard such good things about this. Then the first time I picked it up, I was a little bored and unsure if I would go on. Well, I stopped at the wrong spot, because if I’d just started the next chapter, I would have been hooked! Because the second time I picked it up, I totally started to see what the reviews I’d skimmed before were talking about.

The love story was so good, but it was also so much more than that. Clementine in the present day was still reeling from the death of her aunt that she had been so close to. Her aunt had left her apartment to Clementine, which while wonderful in one way, it also had so many memories it was hard for her to deal with being there. And the morning she woke up and there was a strange man in the apartment, wow! That was crazy! But how it all unfolded with the things her aunt had told her about the magic in the apartment, well that was unique and so good! There were things I wondered about why one didn’t reach out to the other in the time between, but it made sense when I thought about it, as well as when the characters worked those things out for themselves. 

The times that the two of them got to spend together in the apartment were perfect with banter and time spent together just the way I’d want to get to know someone myself. Then there were the little connections between the two when they didn’t really know the one they ran into, or at least one of them didn’t, and those were special too. And then when they had to reconnect in the present day, wow, it was perfect. Nothing was too overdramatic like so often happens, it just really seemed real for those moments.

Finally, I didn’t quite see what Clementine decided at the end coming until she did, but it made sense and tied in perfectly with Iwan/James’s journey as well.

A wonderful book, so glad I made the time to fit this e-galley into my reading schedule!