Review: Hitting the Wall (Stonecut County Series Book 1) by Cate C Wells

Hitting the Wall by Cate C. Wells
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Even Better Than The Blurb

I decided to try this book, based purely on the blurb because I’d never read anything by this author before. I thought it would be your standard small-town romance but it was so much more than I thought it would be. If you read a lot (and I do) you read the signals given in the blurb in a certain way. Your brain takes shortcuts and decides what a book is going to be like and if it fits your criteria you download it. This book ticked boxes for the mood I was in and when I read it got something a lot more than I was expecting.

This is a small town second chance romance, but it’s also about Shay, a mother who has been forced to step up to the plate at a really young age to fight for everything her daughter needs. She was run out of town, aged 17 and pregnant, and forced to go back to her neglectful mother. 7 years later circumstances are such that she feels forced to return to her deceased grandfather’s trailer to live for a few months whilst she saves up enough money to start again somewhere fresh.

A few weeks into her return the father of her daughter, deputy sheriff and town golden boy, Kellum, sees them and recognises his daughter. A daughter he didn’t know existed. Kellum is divorced from his high school sweetheart and his boss and godfather is under investigation by the FBI. The shine is starting to tarnish on his golden life and when he finds his daughter and Shay he grabs onto his chance of real happiness with both hands.

See it all sounds good doesn’t it. Except it isn’t, because the men who ran Shay out of town are still there, still doing the same sorts of things and these men are Kellum’s beloved family. Shay doesn’t trust the situation and even though all she wants is her daughter’s happiness, she can’t help but want a little happiness too, but she doesn’t trust she’ll be allowed to have and keep it.

I love how nuanced this book is. There are so many layers peeled back on small-town living and how different the experience is for those who have money and power and those who do not. It explores how hard things are when good people in power do nothing and let the bad people rule the roost. It explores how different the experience is of having a child with special needs when you have money and power and when you do not, even in a small town where resources are not as stretched as in a big city.

I think this book especially resonated with me because my family has experience with facing the educational establishment with special needs children. I recognised some of the battles Shay fought, even though I’m in a different country. I’ve also been the poor person surrounded by people with money and power and it’s an uncomfortable place to be, even when those people are good.

This book isn’t just a small-town romance it’s much more layered and challenging. I couldn’t stop reading it, it sucked me it and my brain won’t stop whirring with it. I’m so glad this is the start of a series, I’m definitely reading the rest of it because this book starts a chain of events I can’t wait to see resolved. The characters are amazingly complex and layered and the supporting characters are still convincing and obviously will come into their own in future books.

Now I have to go back and read all about Kellum’s older brother who’s a member of an MC (another of my favourite genres) as I’m intrigued to know how the author has made that genre much more than usual.

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