Publisher: Ballantine Books
Release Date: February 7, 2017
Source: Borrowed from the library
Rating: ★★★

Enjoying a romantic candlelit dinner with her fiancé, Ryan, at one of Seattle’s chicest restaurants, Kailey Crain can’t believe her good fortune: She has a great job as a journalist and is now engaged to a guy who is perfect in nearly every way. As she and Ryan leave the restaurant, Kailey spies a thin, bearded homeless man on the sidewalk. She approaches him to offer up her bag of leftovers, and is stunned when their eyes meet, then stricken to her very core: The man is the love of her life, Cade McAllister.

When Kailey met Cade ten years ago, their attraction was immediate and intense—everything connected and felt right. But it all ended suddenly, leaving Kailey devastated. Now the poor soul on the street is a faded version of her former beloved: His weathered and weary face is as handsome as Kailey remembers, but his mind has suffered in the intervening years. Over the next few weeks, Kailey helps Cade begin to piece his life together, something she initially keeps from Ryan. As she revisits her long-ago relationship, Kailey realizes that she must decide exactly what—and whom—she wants.

Alternating between the past and the present, Always is a beautifully unfolding exploration of a woman faced with an impossible choice, a woman who discovers what she’s willing to save and what she will sacrifice for true love.

This was a nice change of pace from the dark suspense novels I’ve been reading. The story alternates between 1996 and 2008. Kailey in the “present” is engaged to Ryan and has a seemingly perfect life. Leaving a restaurant one evening, Kailey spots a homeless man who happens to be her long-lost love, Cade, missing for the past 12 years. She has to help him, can’t risk letting him slip away again, but doing so with Ryan around will be tricky. Jump back to 1996, and we get the story of how Kailey and Cade fell in love, as well as a nostalgic look at the Seattle music scene of the 1990s.

An intriguing mystery (what really happened to Cade?), a rainy Seattle setting, and second chances. ALWAYS was a feel-good read, though it seemed contrived at times. Things fell into place a bit too neatly, and there were unanswered questions and things that didn’t make sense, especially about Cade’s disappearance. Overall, I liked the book, though not as much as a couple of her previous novels. (I *loved* BLACKBERRY WINTER and GOODNIGHT JUNE.)