Reviews with content warning for Toxic relationship - Hopeless

☕️ First person dual POV
☕️ Series (can be read stand alone)
☕️ Age gap
☕️ Fake engagement; he wants his family off his back, she needs a new last name around town
☕️ Ex-military / bartender
☕️ His family are well known & loved around town, hers are the opposite
☕️ Protective MMC who is a cinnamon roll for her
☕️ He falls first
☕️ Well established secondary characters; Harvey & Cordelia, Cade & Willa (Book 2), Rhett & Summer (Book 1), Sloane & Jasper (Book 3), Winter & Theo (Book 4), Gary, Grant (hoping for a book 🤞🏻)
☕️ MC growth; communication, risking a relationship, military trauma & childhood trauma, self-worth/being worthy of love.
☕️ Epilogue
☕️ My comfort read series (and author) 😍
☕️ Elsie Silver is an instant must-read author for me

⚠️ Parental abandonment (past), toxic relationship (family), childhood trauma/verbal abuse (minor), fire injury/injury detail (explicit, revisit injury on page), war/military (past, revisited on page), medical trauma (past, revisited on page), PTSD (Moderate), death of a parent (past), pregnancy (not MC), sexism/sexual harassment.

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rustedtulips's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging emotional funny hopeful inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Beau Eaton is basically the towns perfect prince from a family that might as well be royalty, he’s literally a military Hero who’s been through more than his share of pain, especially in recent times.

Bailey on the other hand, is more like the town reject, a bartender in the small town where everyone looks down on her and nobody shows her respect, except for maybe the Eaton family. Which is strange since their basically her families rivals and the two line absolutely hate each other.

Their family rivalry is kind of funny, since they are fake engaged to each other now. The problem is that they might just each want to be a little bit more than fake interested in each other, but how could that work in the real world when Bailey wants to leave the god forsaken that’s always looked down on her and Beau has his whole life wrapped up in his family, their ranch and everything he loves about the town she can’t wait to escape?

I’m going to be honest, I loved the idea of reading Beau’a story. I knew it would be deep and I knew some of it would be dark. However what I couldn’t see was who his match would be! Which is honestly ridiculous looking back, because obviously Bailey is just perfect for him!

I loved keeping up with all the family drama of the Eaton’s as well as the characters from the previous stories. It’s always enjoyable to really get caught up with characters you love, over and over again.

The writing of these books is also top tier, I never actually see the full twist coming, I saw the hints and had my suspicions but omg that twist had me mad! I was heartbroken for Bailey but so hopeful for things to work out perfectly (like it wasn’t going to! 🤦‍♀️)

Finally a little note on the spice, because oh my gosh was it spicy! I feel like this book in particular was incredibly full of spice from the beginning, despite the fact they didn’t do the deed for most of the book! Right from the beginning, these two just seemed so ramped up and open about their desires. I absolutely loved that despite being a virgin Bailey was so curious and unable to hold back her desire to know all the answers to her sexual questions that she just blurts them out. It had me howling, while creating some pretty steamy moments at the same time! I think this is a 4 star spice rating for me.

It’s definitely a series I’d recommend if you enjoy spice, because this cowboy spice is something else entirely.

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amanda_reads13's review against another edition

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emotional lighthearted fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.5

Beau is an Eaton, Chestnut Springs royalty and a military hero with a tortured past. Bailey is an outcast, daughter of the most hated family in town. They strike a deal to fake an engagement to get his family off his back and to help restore her reputation.

I am not going to lie. I had high hopes for this one and I love Beau, but this just fell flat for me. It seemed to be rushed and quality that was present in the rest of this series, just wasn't there. I'm sad to say that this was my least favourite, but there was SO much potential!

I loved that all of the other characters were intertwined within this story and we got some of the dad's wild humour.

I appreciate how sensitive Silver was with the the discussion of PTSD and Beau's injuries. That said, the book barely goes into detail about what happened to him. Exploring his past would have given so much more depth to the story.

I don't understand the "bet" angle. There wasn't really a bet, it was more of a deal or a pact.

Beau gave me whiplash. I guess that was the point, since that is what Bailey is experiencing, but how does he switch to such extremes?

Bailey was hypersexualitized throughout the whole book. It was like her whole personality was an outcast virgin. There was SO much focus on the fact that she was a virgin by Beau and she was so hyperfocused on sex, that it became pretty much the entire plot!

Something that really annoyed me was this idea of love conquers or cures all. Both of these characters have serious mental health issues and PTSD that they don't deal with. There is the underlying theme that their relationship is going to cure all their issues, it's not. Both of these characters should be in therapy. I don't understand why there had to be an anti-therapy angle to this book.

Tropes: fake engagement, age gap, virgin FMC, tortured MMC, small town

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torilovesheas's review against another edition

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emotional funny hopeful medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.25

It kills me that this one was a bit of a miss for me. I sort of feared this one wouldn’t work for me and while I did really like some parts, it’s definitely my least favorite in the series.

The best part of this was Beau and Bailey as people and how they navigate a relationship when they don’t *really* know what they want to do with their lives. The time they spend with each other is sweet and I felt like that fit as a couple. Truly the best parts of the story are the intimate moments between Beau and Bailey where they’re just talking or making memories together. The age gap + virgin FMC worked for me in this one because Bailey’s reasons for remaining a virgin make sense and it never feels like her virginity is fetishized. (And she really doesn’t give a shit about it, tbh). Bailey is tougher than she seemed in earlier appearances and Beau is a bit softer than I was imagining which I loved! I love that we get to see the areas they compliment each other because it made their relationship believable in a set-up that was a bit non-sensical.

Which leads me to what didn’t work for me. There really was no reason why a fake relationship needed to be here and the reasons behind the fake engagement were very thin. In the grand scheme of things, this would have worked just fine as an age gap between a bartending town pariah and the big shot town hero without a buzzword trope thrown in. I need a trope like that to make sense and it didn’t here. There weren’t stakes high enough to warrant an entire engagement.

And as a final little grievance, if you’re going to have a character that very clearly needs therapy (in this case, due to PTSD from war), having them be totally anti-therapy isn’t going to work for me. And it’s probably largely personal because…living with and loving someone that suffers from PTSD isn’t going to be fixed by a happy relationship.

I am sad the series is at an end and I’m glad to know we’ll be Chestnut Springs adjacent in the next series! (Which I’m really excited for).

Thank you to Elsie for an ARC. All thoughts and opinions are my own!

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