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Release Blitz: Alone With You: Aly Martinez

by - Thursday, August 22, 2024



Alone With You
Aly Martinez
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August 22, 2024

From the USA TODAY bestselling author of From the Embers comes a new jaw-dropping standalone romance.


Pain trapped me in this house. Can love set me free?

Death had been chasing me my entire life. I survived the horrors of war, but it was the aftermath that truly destroyed me.

People called me a recluse, but the only time I didn’t feel like I was suffocating was inside that house.

For my daughter, I kept some semblance of normalcy by implementing a rigid routine. Once a week, I forced myself to walk to the diner at the end of the block—a ritual I despised but relied on as my last anchor to the real world.

Until the day a “Closed” sign on the door shattered my fragile existence. Worse, the new owner was the most haunting ghost from my past.

It had been years since I’d laid eyes on Gwendolyn Pierce. She hated me—and rightly so. But when a film crew arrived in town to dig into my past, she became my only ally.

With my secrets threatened, I leaned on Gwen, forging a connection neither of us could deny. But with a past as dark as ours, I feared it would eclipse any hope for a future.

I always said that when Death finally came for me, I would be ready, eager, and alone.
Always alone.

But for Gwen, maybe I could face the world again as long as it meant I could be alone—with her.





Oh my God, Aly Martinez is back! It’s been a little bit, so I had kind of forgotten just how all-consuming and intriguing her books are. All of the mysteries, surprises and twisty turns, the layers of guilt, tension, conflict, secrets,  anguish, drama, inspiration, and the sheer volume of emotions that go through you during her books is almost too much. But I could not put it down.

My heart completely broke for Truett West. And the more I learned, the more it cracked open, but the more I wanted him to find a way out to live again and to find happiness. And I felt bad for Gwen too because she had been through hell and back and was just trying to find a new happy normal when Truett shows back up in her life.

But these two had such a connection, history, and chemistry that there was this magnetic pull between them that was hard to control even when they truly did not understand what the other was truly thinking or the full extent of what they had been through. And seeing the layers start to peel back, especially from Truett, and seeing where his mind has been and why he made the choices he made just made me feel even more towards him. Their past is complicated, tragic, and painful, and there are a lot of unresolved feelings and pain that they have not really dealt with. 

I’m usually good at picking out twists in stories but this one just kept them coming. Some hit harder than others but I love it when an author can surprise me. 

This author has always been incredible at writing broken boys, but this one she broke multiple times and then pretty much shut him in with his grief, guilt, and regret. The depths of his pain are unfathomable. He copes with his self-imposed routine and partial isolation and managing his environment. But seeing Gwen starts to crack his walls and defenses. And they begin to restore a connection that was broken and devastated them both and changed the trajectory of their lives. 

Told in dual points of view and flashbacks we are given little snippets to fill in the past gradually throughout the book and just when you think you know everything, another zinger comes. These characters and this story felt real. I felt all their emotions, good and bad. There are many ways that they have been broken, but they are also finding the inspiration and catalyst to change and try to move forward finally. And I was rooting for them the whole time. I feel that the author also did not sugarcoat the mental health issues and the importance of working on them and that there is a process to heal. 

This is a stand-alone but there are events and characters tied to other books that add depth to the story. This story in itself is captivating, heartbreaking, powerful, inspiring, poignant, and unforgettable. It really resonated with me. It hurt. But the emotional and tumultuous journey is worth it to see them start to heal, grow, and fight their way back to a second chance at love, and living a full life. I am still in a book hangover and this is one of my top favorite books this year. 
Gwen is a divorcee, single mom trying to rebuild her life on her own terms. She loved Truett once, a lifetime ago, and wasn’t expecting to run into him again when she set out to renovate and rebuild a local diner. But her dream now is to renovate the diner, to breathe new life into it and make something that is all her own. Her ex-husband isn’t the easiest to deal with, but she puts up with him in order to provide stability and access to both parents for her son.

Truett is a recluse living a very routine driven life. Once a week he ventures out of his house for an hour at a greasy spoon diner, until he finds a closed sign on the door and a blast from his past. He suffers from PTSD from more than one tragedy in his past, tragedies that have shaped everything about who he is today - alone, closed off, and living in a world of grief.

I went in nearly blind to this book, as is my habit with most of Aly’s titles. At this point, I expect pages of anguish, hurt, and then healing and hope. This had all of that and more. I loved the way pieces tied to a previous book, that I had forgotten details and flashback scenes from this book made me remember. I loved the way these two had a past that was painful to each but they had worked their own way to live in the present and gave the story something to deal with when they finally faced each other again.

This book checked all the boxes I didn’t know I was looking for. The twists and turns that I should expect from Aly by now were absolutely present and had me unable to put this book down. Watching Truett and Gwen as they navigated their thorny past broke my heart and as the present day story built I couldn’t help but wonder how they could work through the hurt and pain they each have carried for so long. There are some pretty heavy topics and some may want to be wary of TWs. But I am still thinking of this book days later (and struggling to dive into my next book as a result) and it will stand as one of my favorites of the year.


Aly Martinez

Originally from Savannah, Georgia, USA Today bestselling author Aly Martinez now lives in South Carolina with her four young children.

Never one to take herself too seriously, she enjoys cheap wine, charcuterie boards, and her mildly neurotic golden retriever. It should be known, however, that she hates pizza and ice cream, almost as much as writing her bio in the third person.

She passes what little free time she has reading anything and everything she can get her hands on, preferably with a super-sized tumbler of wine by her side.


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