I’ve been a huge Anyta Sunday fan since I read my first book, Leo Loves Aries but a couple of her more recent stories just didn’t grab me the way that The Signs of Love series did – until this book. I loved absolutely everything about Fin and Ethan’s love story and couldn’t put it down once I started reading it.

Finley isn’t happy about his mom’s upcoming marriage and the fact that he has to move and change schools. He’s also not excited to be getting a step-brother, Ethan. Ethan’s dad discourages him from doing the things he enjoys. He wants to be an early childhood teacher. He likes playing dress up and games with his young neighbors and his father is not happy about that. His father is also not happy that he and Finley seem to be getting a little closer than he is really comfortable with.

The blurb already tells us that Finley is going to have a thing for Ethan but it really can’t convey the true depth of this story. In classic Anyta Sunday fashion this is a super slow-burn romance. Even when things heat up there’s still not a lot of hot sexy time and that was perfect for Fin and Ethan’s romance.

I’ve never read the classic book that this is based on so I have no idea how closely it parallels Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park but I wouldn’t care if it didn’t resemble that book at all. Anyta Sunday has written Finley and Ethan’s story with so much depth and angst and love that I just can’t say enough good things about it. I want to add that I’m not really in to “taboo” books but this didn’t feel like a taboo story to me. Finley and Ethan aren’t that young when they become family and nothing really happens between them until they are much older so the fact that they were step-brothers didn’t seem taboo to me at all.

The story spans quite a few years, beginning when Finley is about 14 and Ethan a bit older. They become friends and then Ethan goes away for a year. Knowing that Finley will make the same trip and stay in the same places the year after, Ethan leaves notes for Finley at each stop. This was so romantic to me. Unfortunately, other things happen and their great romance is stalled.

I wish I could write well enough to really convey how much I loved this book. The tears were flowing freely near the end which always mean that it’s a story that touched me deeply and that I loved it.

Reviews for Anyta Sunday

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Red brick and shingles and intricate white latticework.

Someone is up on the turret, looking down on us. I can’t stare back long against the glare of the sun. Male, sports cap.

Mum loads a duffel bag into my arms.

She takes the last two suitcases of our clothes—in mine, the picture of Dad—from her fender-bent hatchback. This is all we’ve got.

Mansfield has everything else we need, she said.

The car, Mum and I—our whole lives—are dwarfed by the historic mansion that looms before us.

It should be raining. There should be thunder and lightning cracking the sky the way my heart is cracking.

“I want to go home.”

“I know it’ll take time to adjust,” she coos in my ear. “But I promise, it’ll all turn out in the end. You’ll see.”

My throat is sore. “Couldn’t you have waited?” I know my whine is unreasonable, but I want her to feel my pain. Want her to feel guilty. “It’s only three more years until I leave school.”

Tom emerges from the massive entrance in a short-sleeved shirt and crisply pressed shorts. All that’s missing is a golf bag and a flash of his overly-whitened teeth.

Mum melts into a smile at the sight of him, then settles her warm eyes on me. She speaks a proverb; I know it, but I’ve never understood it before. I don’t really now, either. “Ka mate te kāinga tahi, ka ora te kāinga rua.”

When one house dies, a second lives.

But our home wasn’t dead. And leaving the refuge he made for us feels like leaving his memory behind. It feels worse.

Tears leak out the corners of my eyes. I want to sing and cry like we did at his tangi.

Mum pulls the duffel from my arms and hoists me into her embrace. She clutches me tightly, her bright dress wrinkling between us. “He is our past, he is always a part of us.”

Now we must concentrate on the present and build a future.

She lets me go and opens her arms for Tom.

I kick at the sun-gleaming grass. A black cat scampers from behind the tree and hisses as it avoids my arcing foot.

“Oi,” Tom scolds. “Careful of Mrs. Norris.”

“I didn’t . . .” It was an accident! I’d never hurt a cat.

“Why don’t you take your bag inside and look around? Help yourself to a scone, there’s some on the dining table.”

I don’t want to listen to him. I fold my arms.

He starts kissing my mum.

I grab my suitcase and stalk across the manicured lawn to the stupid, pretty house. I hope I leave mud over the pristine polished marble floor. My belongings, I drop in the middle of the entranceway. Where it’s most annoying. Only the duffel and suitcase are so small in the wide space they look ridiculous.

The dining room is as big as our old home. Sun streams in through the gridded windows and across the table set with modern plates and cups with saucers and matching navy teapots and two silver platters of scones. Some clotted cream.

I sit down on a leather-upholstered chair. I like scones. But now I don’t ever want to touch one again.

Tears track down my cheeks, hot and heavy. I swipe at them with the back of my hand, sniffing.

Footsteps.

I shoot my head up, expecting to see Mum and Tom, but it’s neither. A guy strides into the room wearing a blue cap. He’s about my age, a little older, maybe. Broad shouldered like me and toned. But I don’t know where he gets his from, living in a mansion. Okay, Mansfield is on the outskirts of Port Rātapu, and the property looked big. But it’s no farm. I can’t imagine anyone living here doing any heavy lifting.

“I guess you’re Finley?” he says.

“I guess you’re Ethan,” I say back.

Love, Austen Series

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