Love, Utley by S.J. Tilly

Author: S.J. Tilly

Genre: Contemporary Romance

Series: Love Letters - Book 1

Publisher: Self-Published

Source: Paperback (personally purchased)

Rating: 4.5 Stars

Hannah

Maddox Lovelace. The captivating football player I met in college.

The one I only knew for a week. A week that was… life-changing.

Until my phone rang, and I had no choice but to go home.

I left Maddox a letter, putting my feelings on paper, giving him my number, hoping he’d call.

But he didn’t call.

He never called.

He got drafted into the professional league and lived like a king while I stayed home and struggled to stay afloat.

I may have followed his career, but now that he’s retired from football, I’ve forced myself to stop thinking about him.

And it’s okay that I won’t ever see him again. That week in college was fifteen years ago.

I’m not in love with Maddox anymore.

I might even hate him.

Maddox

Hannah Utley. The name that’s haunted me since my senior year of college.

The girl who caught my attention with her wide eyes and freckled nose.

Who spent one week twisting up my insides until she stole a piece of my heart the night we got locked inside the campus library.

The girl who disappeared without a word.

It’s the name of the girl I’ve been trying to forget for fifteen years.

And it’s the name looking up at me from the résumé in my hand.

Because Hannah Utley works for the company I just purchased.

And that makes her mine. Whether she likes it or not.

---

The Premise:

Hannah attended the same university as Maddox during their Junior year of college. After being locked in the university library one night, Hannah and Maddox have a one-night stand and fall hopelessly in love. Unfortunately, fate would intervene and force Hannah to drop out of school the following morning to never see or hear from Maddox again. That is until fifteen years later when Maddox is sitting across a boardroom from Hannah as her employer's new owner.

Hannah and Maddox must heal from their past hurts and discover whether they have a present, or a future, with the other one in it.

The Message for Me:

The story of Hannah and Maddox was very sweet and very relatable. I think any of us who go or have been to college see for ourselves the ingredients presented for knock-your-world-crooked romances to be made. Hannah and Maddox were no different.

After Hannah and Maddox find themselves in each other's orbit over a decade later, they have lived a significant part of their lives apart and are no longer the same people. I think that in itself is something we Millennials reading the story can relate to as well. I know I'm not the same person I was at nineteen that I am now at thirty-four... thank GOD!

The love Maddox shows Hannah is a type of love all women want to receive and that is what I loved about this story the most. Maddox exudes protection and will snap the fingers of anyone who comes within a hair's breadth of forming a thought that could potentially harm Hannah in any way. Not only toward Hannah, though, but also for her mother and her niece, whom Hannah and her mother raise jointly.

Maddox also consistently praises Hannah's body and her beauty, both inside and out. As a woman in my thirties, post two kids, our bodies are most certainly the same as they were fifteen years ago and, thanks to social media plus outside influences, finding self-love is not always the easiest. Maddox's acceptance of the woman Hannah has become is an endearing trait that makes the reader love him even more.

The Genre:

This story is one million percent a contemporary romance with a dash of sports and a hearty helping of workplace romance trope thrown in.

What was good?

1. The chemistry between Hannah and Maddox was phenomenal. Tilly can write some damn good banter and that quality in her writing is what made the story for me.

2. Relatable characters are a huge plus for me in any genre, but especially a contemporary one. That is what makes contemporary fiction difficult to write; readers are going to take contemporary fiction and lay it over their own lives to see what lines up. Tilley did a wonderful job of giving me something of myself in these characters but with a twist of things that can go a bit differently.

Why not a higher score?

There was a moment when the plot was not fully closed for me and left me wanting.

We know Hannah and Maddox had a romantic event in the college library that left them altered forever, but we never saw or understood what pulled them together to begin with. There were nuggets dropped to say they ran into one another in the library before that night, but nothing was shown or explained to the reader as to what that connection was from the moment they met. Ultimately, for me, I was missing that initial meet-cute.

To understand why a connection stood so strong after fifteen years apart, I have to understand how it was formed. That night is such a crucial aspect of Hannah and Maddox's past, present, and future; I needed more development.

Overall:

I would give Love, Utley 4.5 stars.

I finished this story in 1 day, and I knew from reading the first few pages it was going to be a one-sitter. Even with the slight plot gap, I still very much enjoyed the story. The characters Tilly created and the wonderful writing technique for me outweighed the missing piece.

I will definitely be searching out book 2 in this series! I have a feeling Waller is going to shake some things up ;)