Seeing You (The Donovans:Sweetbriar Ridge 4) by Samantha Chase

Seeing You (The Donovans:Sweetbriar Ridge 4) by Samantha Chase-review

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ABOUT THE BOOK: Release Date January 28, 2025

She walked away and spent years wondering what could have been.
He’s hated her from the moment she walked away from their future.
They thought they needed closure. But maybe what they need is a second chance.

Billie Donovan was so close to having it all. But years ago, she was forced to walk away from Marcus Calloway, choosing her family over their shared future. Since then, she’s accepted that she’s just not meant to have the happy ending she’s seen all her siblings find. Her family is happy and that’s all that’s ever mattered. But when Marcus walks back into her life, Billie is forced to finally face the choices she made all those years ago.

But not before she smashes a muffin in his face when he unexpectedly walks into her bakery.

Marcus has spent years hating the woman he once vowed to love forever, and he felt righteous in that anger because she tore their world apart. When he’s forced to return to Sweetbriar Ridge to help care for his ailing father, he’s shocked to find Billie running the local bakery. They had been a financial dynamic duo all those years ago—building an empire that would guarantee them a life of luxury. So why was she just a lowly baker?

A question that earned him a face full of muffin.

They both swore they needed closure, but what should have been a simple conversation awakened old passions. Suddenly, Marcus isn’t as eager to leave Sweetbriar Ridge, and Billie must decide if she’s prepared to give her heart to a man who doesn’t always see who she really is.

••••••

REVIEW: SEEING YOU is the fourth instalment in Samantha Chase’s contemporary, adult SWEETBRIAR RIDGE: THE DONOVANS romance series-a spin off from the author’s THE DONOVANS series. This is financial advisor Marcus Calloway, and bakery owner Billie Donovan’s story line. SEEING YOU can be read as a stand alone without any difficulty. Any important information from the previous story lines is revealed where necessary.

Told from dual omniscient third person perspectives (Billie and Marcus) SEEING YOU follows the rekindling but contemptuous relationship between financial advisor Marcus Calloway, and bakery owner Billie Donovan. Billie and Marcus were teenaged sweethearts, both successful financial advisors in DC, but ten years earlier, Billie walked away from a future with Marcus, returning home to Sweetbriar Ridge, in the hopes of finding some peace and happiness with her life. Fast forward to present day, Marcus returns to Sweetbriar Ridge in the face of his father’s age and illness, coming up close and personal with the woman he once loved, only to receive a face full of muffin from an angry Billie Donovan when he suggests working as a baker was beneath her education and status. Desperate to convince our heroine she should leave town and return with him, Marcus finds himself the villain in a town where all of the support goes to the woman he once loved.

The world building focuses on the back and forth between our story line couple. Billie wants to stay in Sweetbriar Ridge where she is happy and has established her own business but Billie wants her own happily ever after and she doesn’t see it with Marcus, in the his stakes world of finance. Marcus is a snob; likes expensive things and often looks down on those he consider beneath his worth, and in this, most of the people in Sweetbriar Ridge, consider Marcus a non-entity, and would prefer he left for good.

The relationship between Marcus and Billie is one of second chances; a rekindling romance that continues to struggle with dual futures, dual aims, dual beliefs, and constant misunderstanding and misdirection. Marcus wants Billie to move back to DC but Billie has found peace in small town living. There are no $ex scenes, everything is implied.

The secondary and supporting characters include several of the previous story line couples and characters including; Billie’s siblings Levi and his wife Jade, Ashlyn, and Chloe; who all have our heroine’s best interests at heart, and their parents Marie, and estranged father Ronan;and Marcus’ brother Max, and their father John.

SEEING YOU is a story of struggle, assumptions and acceptance, forgiveness and love. The premise is inviting an emotional; the romance struggles in the face of different views and expectations; the characters are dynamic and determined.

Reading Order and Previous Reviews
Loving You
Teasing You
Wanting You

Copy supplied for review

Reviewed by Sandy

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Samantha Chase is a New York Times and USA Today bestseller of contemporary romance that’s hotter than sweet, sweeter than hot. She released her debut novel in 2011 and currently has more than seventy titles under her belt – including THE CHRISTMAS COTTAGE which was a Hallmark Christmas movie in 2017! She’s a Disney enthusiast who still happily listens to 80’s rock. When she’s not working on a new story, she spends her time reading romances, playing way too many games of Solitaire on Facebook, wearing a tiara while playing with her sassy pug Maylene…oh, and spending time with her husband of 30 years and their two sons in Wake Forest, North Carolina.

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