Title: Something Like This
Author: Karly Lane
Published: December 2020
Publisher: Allen & Unwin
Readership: Adult
Genre: Fiction
Rating: ★★★★.5
RRP: $29.99
Trigger warnings: Death of parents/spouses (off-page, but referred to), medical scare (to a family member)
I received a copy of Something Like This from the publisher in exchange for a fair and honest review. All thoughts and opinions are my own.
A spellbinding new rural romance from the bestselling author of the Callahans of Stringybark Creek trilogy and Fool Me Once.
Jason Weaver just wants to be left alone. It was a tough transition from his army days to civilian life, and he’s looking forward to settling into a solitary life.
Tilly Hollis is working two jobs to save for her dream career: running an equine therapy program. Tilly loves her horses more than anything, and after losing her husband and business partner just a few years earlier, she’s determined to make it work on her own.
When Jason walks into the cafe where Tilly works, they’re immediately drawn to one another. But can they overcome their pasts to find a future together?
Long time readers of my blog know how much I adore reading Karly Lane’s books – they’re my weekend/afternoon pick-me-up books that never fail me from an entertainment perspective. I can also let everyone know that since Karly released her last book, my mum has also borrowed and read every Karly Lane book I own (and tried to steal this one before I’d reviewed it!).
Something Like This is a new, standalone rural romance. Tilly Hollis is working two jobs in order to pursue her dream of opening an equine therapy program – a long-term project goal she shared with her late husband. While at work in the town’s cafe she meets Jason Weaver, formerly from the army, who’s tried to find the quietest small town to enjoy a solitary life. Immediately drawn to one another, but their pasts keep interfering with their present.
Karly Lane didn’t disappoint with her latest book. Tilly is a strong, independent woman who has survived the deaths of both a spouse and a parent and is determined to see her dream of building an equine therapy program using Guy Fawkes Heritage Horses. She’s not looking for love or distractions, but she finds herself intrigued by Jason, a loner, who comes into the cafe where she works during her shifts. Eventually she begins to get to know him – that he was in the army, that his leg was amputated as the result of an IED, and that he just wants to live his life peacefully. Jason, likewise, is intrigued by and drawn to this woman he’s only just met and the two begin to purse their interest. No story is without its conflict, and this comes in the form of a protective streak in Jason that has implications for Tilly’s therapy program.
The setting for this story felt very contained to the town (although Tilly does spend some time in the city with her sister) and that helps to ground it. A lot of the story focuses on Tilly building and developing the equine therapy program on her property, as well as the first group of at-risk teenagers that she has onsite.
What’s clear in this book is the author’s love for the horses she writes about – Australia’s wild horses (or brumbies). Much of the story has an emphasis on their history as the horses used in World War I before being turned loose into the wild, and now how they are captured and re-homed (rather than being killed). As a very ‘city’ person, I feel like I learn one new thing each time I picked up one fo Lane’s books.
As always, it was a great book from an author I love.
Noveltea Corner 