THE REGRET DUET by ALY MARTINEZ

“The only reason I hate you is because I can’t figure out how to fucking hate you at all.”

What a story!! Absolutely brilliant! From the heart-stopping prologue through to the beautifully emotional finish, The Regret Duet by Aly Martinez held us captive on every single page! We were unable to move whilst devouring this clever, exquisitely written jaw-dropping story that was unlike anything we’ve read in some time. With every turn of the page, we became enthusiastically, nervously and ravenously enthralled by Aly Martinez’s superb storytelling and wonderful characters.

“This hurts,” I croaked. “God, why does this hurt?”
“Because love is an impossible game. Especially when only one person knows the rules.”

The first thing we must stress is – stay away from spoilers! This book had so many twists, shocks and surprises we didn’t see coming which made our reading experience even more breathtaking. We want other readers to feel the way we did and so our review will be vague story wise.

‘Half of my heart was singing grand hymns of praise. The other half was withering into nothingness.’

We read a lot – we’re voracious readers who feel incomplete without a book in our hands. This is both a joy and a curse because it’s getting hard to surprise us these days, as we tend to work out twists early on. Whilst this doesn’t always negatively impact the story for us, it does take away the shock effect we love to experience. Well, Aly Martinez did surprise us! That cliffy in book one! We did not see it coming! In fact, there were so many twists in this duet that knocked us for six, we found ourselves expressing our shocks vocally (and loudly), and we can’t tell you how much we loved that!

Everything about this story was flawless in our eyes. There were times we wondered how in the hell Aly Martinez was going to deliver resolutions without it feeling forced, but she did and she did it splendidly and organically! We were well and truly engrossed in every aspect of this duet!

“It’s okay to live with regret, Caven. But it’s something totally different to live in regret.”

This duet was a complex story with a heart-stopping, devastating prologue which immediately seized the reader. It then skips fourteen years when we meet Caven Hunt who is celebrating becoming a self-made multi-millionaire. Life is looking good for single Caven until… the cries of a baby abandoned on his doorstep, the result of a one night stand, changes his life forever. Caven had long ago decided children weren’t in his future for reasons we find out as the story progresses, but on finding out the baby is his, Caven, steps in to raise his daughter.

‘It was crazy the way children could heal a broken soul.’

We move forward four years and find Caven, now thirty-three, has embraced single fatherhood becoming a doting Dad to four-year-old Rosalee (Rosie) and what a relationship it was. The humour was natural,  the banter between Caven and his cheeky sassy daughter was funny, sweet and heart melting! Caven the man completely stole our hearts! Yes, he could be hot-headed but this man had seen more than his fair share of tragedy, loss and pain in his years than most would see in a lifetime.

‘Yes, my life had been hell, filled with more pain and chaos than others saw in a lifetime. But falling in love with Rosalee Hunt was the easiest thing I’d ever done. And the first time she’d said “I love you, Daddy,” I’d frozen, my chest so tight that I thought there was a solid chance I was having a heart attack.’

But…Rosie’s mother has returned and Caven is not at all happy! What does she want and why has she been absent for four years? Are her intentions above board? You’ll have to read and see!

Told through dual povs between Hadley and Caven, we learn just how their lives were entwined and why she abandoned her baby in Caven’s care. Now, this is where the twists and turns left our heads spinning! We couldn’t have predicted how this story would pan out and how completely consumed we would become, frozen to our Kindles until the final pages. What a rollercoaster of emotions!

‘And now, I knew what loving a man was supposed to feel like.’

We loved Caven, Rosie and Hadley (and their friends Ian and Beth!) – we couldn’t fault anything about these characters. They were relatable, their emotions and actions natural and each one gave us pause for thought as our hearts bled for the tragedy they had endured in their young lives. We understood their pain and lived their heartbreak and anguish. We felt everything!

We went from euphoric to heartbreak – we giggled, we smiled, we cried and we embraced the warmth of the characters, whilst holding our hearts in agony! We didn’t come up for air once!

This is one of the best duets we’ve read! This is what we call a ‘real duet’ a story that needed to be told over two books – not one book cut in half. The ending to book one left us reeling – we had to immediately move onto the second book, the second book left us breathless!

“Because life isn’t lived as a whole. You aren’t given a hundred years all at once. Time is doled out one very manageable second at a time.”

Clear your reading schedule, grab this duet and prepare to become completely fixated on an unforgettable, moving and surprising story – lose yourself in the smart and sincere writing, then tell your friends all about it!