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Friends to Lovers, Emotional Series Finale
Dotted Lines
Runaway (Book 5)
Contemporary Romance
Devney Perry LLC
March 2, 2021
ebook, paperback, audiobook
234
Clara Saint-James is completing a journey started by an old friend. She’ll return a Cadillac to California, a place she’s avoided for more than a decade. But it’s time for closure and to put old ghosts to rest. And it’s time to find out if the feelings she’s cherished for the boy from her past are just fanciful memories—or if there’s a chance they are real.
Timing was never on her side, especially when it came to Karson Avery. The two of them lived in a junkyard as runaway teens, and though she wanted more than his friendship, he always belonged to another—until that one night when he was hers.
When Clara finds Karson living in a small, coastal town, she’s not surprised the beautiful boy from her past grew into a stunning man. His smile is as captivating as ever. His eyes have the same roguish glint. But timing is still working against her.
Clara must decide how far she’s willing to go to battle for Karson’s heart. Or if it’s time to let him go and surrender to the dotted lines that have always kept them apart.
“I hated that what I wanted most was to take her hand and see if her fingers still fit between mine like they had when we were younger.” —Devney Perry, Dotted Lines
In this last installment of the Runaway series, Devney Perry has truly saved the one that plucked at my heart strings the most with Dotted Lines. Clara and Karson’s story is one about unrequited yearning that doesn’t happen over days or weeks, but months and years.
There is something truly sweet about a love that happens after insurmountable odds, or one that happens in the amidst of hardship. A love that grows between friends is even sweeter, and even if Clara and Karson both agree that they had to grow up quicker than what their ages allowed, they saw the truth in their feelings. The way the story weaves the past and the present is so beautiful, and I think for me helps to create that poignancy of the love that never leaves either of them.
“Clara had been as real as the stars in the sky and the dirt below my feet.”
For the entire four books prior to Dotted Lines, we fans have been anticipating the time where Karson finally gets to tell his story, and we get to find out what has happened to him. Getting more insight aboutClara too, while she brings her son Gus to deliver the Cadillac to Karson in California. Both Karson and Clara confront the past and put any unresolved and unspoken issues to bed at the old junkyard. I loved that even though they had unresolved issues in the past, they still needed to work through issues in the present too. Devney knows exactly how much angsts to sprinkle in her books!
If I’m being perfectly honest, Devney Perry could write a love story about a paper cup and a frog and I would be riveted. The emotions are so well-crafted on the page between Karson and Clara. The scenes they have together are just gorgeously evocative. This is your warning that once you start reading Dotted Lines, you won’t want to put it down. Dotted Lines is perfectly bingeable.
Jes is a self-proclaimed bookworm, who recently moved from the PNW back to the Midwest. When her nose isn’t in a book, she’s spending time with her husband, two kids, and her three fur babies, or exploring the globe. She also firmly believes that you should start the day with coffee, and end the day in bed with a good book.
