WORTH THE WAIT (McKinney/Walker #1) by CLAUDIA CONNOR :: REVIEW

Emotional second chance romance featuring children

Reviewed by Gitte & Jenny

‘They just were. Nick and Mia. Always.’

We picked Worth the Wait up not having read the series from which this is a spin off, on the basis it’s being tagged a standalone. For us, we felt like we’d missed out somewhat on Hannah and Nick’s sibling bond, but yes, in most respects this stands alone. There’s absolutely no question that Claudia Connor’s writing is beautiful. She demands attention with a powerful and passionate prose. We felt incredibly sad with very heavy hearts as we read one of the more emotionally upsetting romances we’ve read in a while. It’s very difficult to read a story where the heroine and hero spend more agonising time apart than they do together. You begin to doubt it’ll ever happen for whichever tragic reasons presented.

“It’s been a long time. Maybe you don’t know me anymore.”

“I know you.”

We fell in love with all the characters in this story; especially Nick and his much younger sister, Hannah. Their relationship melted our hearts whilst making us all teary at the same time. Nick found himself in the distressing position of having to hold his parent-less family together when he became the head of the family through heart-breaking circumstances. A heavy load for a young man barely out of his teens. His caring, protective, determined and nurturing side knew no bounds and we fell in love with this young man.

“How can I forget when you always remind me?”

Worth the Wait is a book of continuous past and present. Through the flashbacks we learn of how it all began for Mia and Nick; with two year old Hannah in tow. From the present we learn of them being apart, and the struggles facing them individually, due to a horrific event which separated them a decade ago. It broke us. In the flashback’s we felt some of their love and connection. In the present we felt their agony and subsequent emotional pain.

‘He was barely there, so lost in his dark cage of anger and guilt he’d built for himself, he’d locked himself in and locked her out.’

Whilst we loved many, many parts of this story we felt the balance was excessively weighted towards the incredibly heavy angst, guilt, responsibility, despair and suffering. We barely experienced any joy nor happiness.

“You’ve got the past clenched so tightly in your fist, I’ll never be enough to make you let it go. I can’t go back to that place we were. It nearly killed me.”

Now, we love our highly emotional reads, however we do need some happy or at least an epilogue that completely mends our broken hearts and leaves us more than satisfied that everything is okay and everyone is where they need to be. Particularly after a journey that was as emotionally taxing as this one. This is a personal preference so we may be in the minority. Saying that, there is no question that this talented Author made our hearts bleed and kept us riveted, needing to find out if Mia and Nick would ever find their way back to where they began after so many years separating them.

“It still shakes me that something so enormous as our love could be erased so simply.”

3.5 Stars

The McKinney Series by Claudia Connor

Worth The Fall Book One

Worth The Risk Book Two

Worth It All Book Three