Ghost in his eyes
Title: Ghost in his eyes
Author: Carrie Aarons
Genre: Romance, Fiction
Published: 21st April 2017
Pages: 212
Start Date: 14th June 2022
Finish Date: 14th June 2022
Summary
He was as magnetic as a deadly hurricane to the shore. Carson Cole was my first love. The boy I'd shared my whole self with. He was the man who'd taken the other part of my soul and drowned it in the sea we'd grown up in. And he's back. Ten years later, and the demons of our past are still haunting every breath trapped between us. She was as wild as the horses who owned the beach highways we drove down.
Blake Sayer was the beautiful daredevil who has me wrapped round her finger from the time we were seven. Until a horrible accident stile every piece of joy from her life. Ten years later, she's a shell of the girl she once was, and it's all my fault. The whispers of our history shackle her to the island I left behind. Just like lost years and unspoken words, love had slipped from our fingers like grains of sand. We'd barely made it out alive last time, was it even possible to reconstruct the shattered pieces of us?
Review
Ghost in His Eyes, Carrie has given us a second-chance romance that is as heartrending as it is hopeful, about three best friends, two of whom fell madly in love, but when they lost the third member of their triumvirate, everything about them changed, leaving nothing more than a love that was lost and hearts seemingly broken beyond repair. When they meet ten years later, the scars are still there; emotional and physical; but so is the love that they've never had with anyone else. But can they finally overcome their loss? Ghost In His Eyes is the first book of Carrie Aarons I have read and it is a credit to her talent. Set in the beautiful Outer Banks of North Carolina, the way Carrie wrote this story made me feel that I was sitting in Carova with the white sandy beaches, clear blue waters of the Atlantic and the wild horses of the Outer Banks surrounding me.
Carson and Blake were high school sweetheart but truly have been in love with each other since they were seven years old. Carson, Blake and her twin brother Joel were inseparable. They shared the good and the bad that comes along with childhood. As they grew so did the love between Carson and Blake, until their senior year of high school when a tragic accident sent Carson fleeing from North Carolina and driving Blake into herself and cementing her isolation from the world.
Ten long lonely years pass for Carson and Blake. Along the way, they change; that is inevitable. But now Carson has returned home and of course, they see each when they least expect to. So much pain still. So much agony. Blake is still bitterly angry, while Carson is wrestling with his neverending guilt. Still, there is a connection between the two that simply cannot be severed. That’s how the truest of love is; no amount of separation can stop what is real. Can these two navigate through the bitterness of one past moment to discover the love that they still shared?
I love a well-written and truly moving second-chance love story and Blake and Carson's tale of love and loss in Ghost in His Eyes stirred a lot of emotions within me. It would be too easy to say that Blake lost more than Carson did ten years ago, but what happened cost Carson as well, he lost his best friend, the girl he loved above everyone else, and time with his parents and his hometown. We get an idea of just how in love Carson and Blake were those years ago with flashbacks, which makes their journey of rediscovery even more meaningful. Ten years may seem like a waste, but grief has no timetable and these two found each other when they were BOTH meant to.
Honestly, I did not want to let this book go. I tried to slow down and stretch out my time in the Outer Banks with Carson and Blake. The feeling of the small beach town with its wild horses and slower pace. The connection between this couple was as breathtaking as it was heartbreaking. I felt their pain, their sadness at all the time they had lost. I felt their joy at finding the same love but on a more mature level; different but the same. This story at its core is a story of hope, heart and healing. Forgiveness, facing challenges and taking a step forward.
Rating:⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️