Series: The Wilder Brothers #6

Author: Carrie Ann Ryan

Genre: Contemporary Romance

Tropes: Jilted Love/MMF/Friends to Lovers

Release Date: December 11, 2023

I was ready to say, ‘I do’, then my fiancé left me at the altar.

Broken and embarrassed, Trace and Elliot helped me run away—ditching my wedding dress in the process.

When I come back to the Wilder Retreat to show the world I’m no longer hurting, I know I must ignore my traitorous needs when it comes to these two men.

Because my body wants them both.

And my soul craves them just as much.

I know I can’t choose, and part of me asks why I should.

Only when we decide to take that chance and share everything, the danger from our pasts refuses to let our choice stand.

With one kiss, one dance into temptation, we could lose everything.

Including our lives.

Sidney was left at the altar by the man her family wanted her to marry, a man she thought she loved. In the haze of finding out her fiance had been cheating on her with his sister, she finds herself being picked up by the Wilders before she is able to return home. A year later, she returns to the Wilder property as she tries to replace the horrible memories with some good ones. She finds the same two men who helped her the first time she was here: Trace and Elliot.

Though Trace isn’t a Wilder, he has been brought into the inner circle by virtue of his position on Bethany’s security team. He takes security of the property very seriously, even with as many people as he has assisting him. But he also finds a spark when he helps Sidney escape her wedding disaster and can still feel the pull when she shows up on the property again.

Elliot isn’t looking for any kind of connection. He is haunted by his one serious relationship, a relationship even his family doesn’t know about. But he too feels the connection when Trace and Siney are around, even if he doesn’t think they will keep him for the long term.

There was a lot going on in this story that didn’t always directly relate to these three figuring out their relationship. Sidney has a lot of family drama and trauma to work through and living in a different city takes her away from the men for a time. Elliot has his memories to work through, and Trace has to figure out how to convince both of them that they can give a real relationship between all three of them a go. I would have loved to see more time spent in a place where they had decided to give their relationship a chance and built on their communication, but it felt like when they reached that point the story started wrapping up very quickly.

The Wilder property drama has calmed down from earlier in the series, but that doesn’t mean everything is smooth sailing on the winery and resort. They are constantly moving forward with new plans, but the big hitch in their progress was something I didn’t see coming.

Though Elliot was the last of the Wilder siblings to find his happiness, he is far from the last single Wilder. With the introduction of the Wilder cousins, there are plenty of new stories to tell in this family.

Carrie Ann Ryan is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of contemporary, paranormal, and young adult romance. Her works include the Montgomery Ink, Talon Pack, Promise Me, and Elements of Five series, which have sold millions of books worldwide. She’s the winner of a RT Book of the Year and a Prism Award in her genres. She started writing while in graduate school for her advanced degree in chemistry and hasn’t stopped since. Carrie Ann has written over one hundred novels and novellas with more in the works. When she’s not losing herself in her emotional and action-packed worlds, she’s reading as much as she can while wrangling her clowder of cats who have more followers than she does.