Reviewer: Tracy Until It Fades by K.A. Tucker
Publisher: Atria Books
Publication Date: June 27th 2017
Genres: Contemporary Romance
Pages: 368
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Twenty-four-year-old truck stop waitress and single mother Catherine Wright has simple goals: to give her five-year-old daughter a happy life and to never again be the talk of the town in Balsam, Pennsylvania: population two thousand outside of tourist season.
And then one foggy night, on a lonely road back from another failed attempt at a relationship, Catherine saves a man’s life. It isn’t until after the police have arrived that Catherine realizes exactly who it is she has saved: Brett Madden, hockey icon and media darling.
Catherine has already had her fifteen minutes of fame and the last thing she wants is to have her past dragged back into the spotlight, only this time on a national stage. So she hides her identity. It works.
For a time.
But when she finds the man she saved standing on her doorstep, desperate to thank her, all that changes. What begins as an immediate friendship quickly turns into something neither of them expected. Something that Catherine isn’t sure she can handle; something that Catherine is afraid to trust.
Because how long can an extraordinary man like Brett be interested in an ordinary woman like Catherine…before the spark fades?
Catherine has had a hard life since she was 17. She always felt like an outsider in her family as she wasn’t the overachiever her siblings were. When she falls in love with her teacher and her mother finds out all hell breaks loose and she forces Catherine to report him to the police. She eventually recants her story (even though they were having an affair) but the damage is done to her reputation. She eventually drops out of school and when she turns 18 moves out of her family’s home.
She gets a job at a truck stop as a waitress but 7 months after the ordeal with her teacher she finds out she’s pregnant. Being a single mother is hard but she does it and does it well. She’s never lived down her “reputation” as she lives in a small town but she lives her life as best she can and tries to protect her now 5 year old daughter from her past.
On the way home from a horrid blind date she comes across a car accident where the driver has been killed. The passenger is stuck in the car but despite it being on fire she manages to pull the large man free and saves his life. She’s now thought of as a hero – especially when it’s discovered that the man she pulled out of the burning vehicle is a famous hockey player. Catherine doesn’t want fame and fortune and no compensation from the hockey player. He does want to meet her, however, and when they meet the sparks fly. Catherine would love to be with Brett but she knows she’s just an ordinary woman and he couldn’t possibly want someone like her. How wrong she is.
Until it Fades is a lovely slow-burn romance that I thoroughly enjoyed. The build up to Brett and Catherine finally coming together was wonderful (maybe a bit slower than what I would have liked but it worked) and the passion that explodes between the two of them is intense. From the moment they saw each other after the accident they connected and eventually become friends. Catherine has quite a self-esteem issue because of how she was treated in the past but her incredibly wonderful friends and Brett help her get over it all. I loved how the few friends that she had, and eventually her family, surrounded her with support and love, each in their own way.
The story kept me on my toes with all of the ins and outs of the story, flashbacks to her high school days, and current events. KA Tucker wrote a great story and one I definitely recommend.
Rating: 4 out of 5
This sounds like a book I’d enjoy! Thanks for the review, Tracy.