Review

What to Expect:
⋆✴︎˚｡⋆ college sports romance ➺ hockey ➺ second chance ➺ friends to lovers ➺ dual timeline ➺ cinnamon roll hero ➺ found family ➺ trauma & healing ➺ neurodivergent rep ⋆✴︎˚｡⋆

I am conflicted about Unbound. I liked the overall story but I don’t think the dual timeline was well done. I was often confused about whether or not I was in the present or past. Confused which times were happy and which weren’t. It was hard for me to focus and keep me emotionally invested.

The mutual yearning, and the emotion was well done though. Unbound definitely delivered on the angst. These two have been through so much in life that I often want to just give Paloma and Bennett a big hug and tell them both that they are worthy of love and especially each others love.

Overall, I had my ups and downs reading this. There were many aspects I liked but the two timeline threw off the pace and it was hard to keep me emotionally invested in the love story.

Huge thanks to @libro.fm for providing an early listening copy. Your kindness is always appreciated.

The Undone Series:

Unsteady
Unloved
Unbound
Undone

∗ Each book in this series features a different couple and can be read as a complete standalone. But for maximum enjoyment, follow the recommended reading order. ∗

❝ Real isn’t how you are made, it’s a thing that happens to you.❞

❝ You breathe; I breathe. All I want is to make you feel good—here and everywhere. To keep you here, safe, if you want. I’ll give you anything you want.❞

❝ Do I haunt you? Do you still think of your hands in my hair and the sleepy feeling that invades my every muscle in the safety of your presence? Do you remember the night you told me it felt like poetry to be inside me?❞

Blurb

A new “angsty, sexy, emotional” (Farrah Rochon, New York Times bestselling author) lyrical romance by Peyton Corinne that follows a college couple through first love, heartbreak, and the struggle to come together again.

Paloma Blake is, at best, antagonistic. But beneath the hairspray, attitude, and promiscuity is a scared girl whose trauma runs deep. Still, the walls she’s built are strong, ensuring everyone only sees Paloma’s sexy façade. Everyone except for Bennett.

Bennett Reiner, the carefully controlled, neurodivergent goalie, has his routines and sticks to them, which helps him keep a hold on his OCD compulsions and the crippling anxiety that comes with them. The quiet and meticulous Bennett sees everything, especially the girl beneath Paloma’s ever-present masks. And he always has.

Unbeknownst to their friends, Bennett and Paloma were each other’s first real love, which ended in crippling heartbreak. Bennett still doesn’t know what happened, and Paloma is determined to stay away from the comfort she used to find only in his arms. For years, Bennett has remained her protective shadow, coming to Paloma’s rescue whenever she asked, keeping her as close and safe as she’ll let him. But, like a tumultuous sea to a constant shore, Bennett and Paloma find each other once more.

Alternating between scenes from their past and present, Unbound contrasts the tentative tension and passionate beginnings of first love with the devastating loneliness and deep yearning of having that love ripped away from you without truly knowing why. As Bennett discovers the truth about Paloma’s past, the threads to his careful control start to come unbound, and both begin to realize that letting go of everything else might be worth it, if it means they both get the real love they once shared again.

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