[ARC REVIEW] “Bittersweet” (Ashton Family #1) By: Carrie Aarons

What is Bittersweet by Carrie Aarons about?

The last place Cassandra Mauer ever thought she’d step foot again was Hope Crest, Pennsylvania. But once the world famous actress gets the call that her estranged father has passed, and his only living relative will need to settle his estate, she finds herself back in the small town that sent her running once upon a time.

Little do her dilapidated childhood home and her father’s affairs know, Cassandra was in need of a project exactly like this to distract from the glamorous life she no longer wants or recognizes. That is, until she bumps into the man whose family is considered Main Street royalty.

Patrick Ashton is the boy next door, a Hope Crest celebrity, and one of the heirs to the most famous restaurants on the East Coast. He has no problem reminding her just how much the town hated her old man … and in turn her for sharing his last name. But when he realizes she’s going to sell the land their two families have fought over for decades, Patrick might have to change his tune.

As he begins scheming to charm the woman the entire country wants to be or be with, she can’t deny the spark of chemistry between them still exists after all these years. The one that simmered in the shared woods behind their homes where no one else could see.

And when the danger that sent her fleeing as a teenager returns to seek revenge, she finds Patrick genuinely in her corner, despite his family’s objections. In the place she swore never to return, she might have just found the love and life she was searching for.

Except old wounds and unsettled scores might not let her keep it.

Rating: 4/5 Stars

Review:

It’s not often that a character is a Hollywood celebrity, and they’re not the most popular (or at least famous) in a small town. But right from the get-go, it doesn’t matter how famous Cassandra is outside of her father’s small town of Hope Crest — here, she’s just his daughter, and since everyone hated him, they don’t like her either by extension.

This book has some of my favorite tropes — it’s enemies to lovers, which we see right from the first chapter — PLUS it has celebrity romance and the only one bed trope, all set in a small town. It hooked me in from the first chapter, and I was intrigued to watch how Cassandra and Patrick’s love story would play out. It’s enemies-to-lovers, but also “our families hate each other,” which adds another layer of complexity to their eventual romance.

Without giving anything away, there’s also a suspense element to the story, which isn’t something that we typically see all that often in romance books, so it was interesting to have the book set apart a bit because of that!

Miscommunication is often a story aspect that readers hate with a passion, so if that’s you, then good news — Cassandra and Patrick have great communication, and having that emotional intelligence added in to the story makes it so much more enjoyable.

Overall, I really liked this one, and I’m so grateful to have been able to read an early copy! The book is out now. (Carrie also has other small town romances as well, which I recommend checking out while you wait for the rest of this series!) As with all new adult/adult romance books, I recommend this for 18+ due to some of the sexual content — but again, don’t let me tell you what to do. I’m excited for the start of a new small town romance series from Carrie, and I’m looking forward to the next book! (These names will mean nothing if you haven’t read this book, but the second book in the series is called “Honeyed” and follows Patrick’s sister, Alana, and Warren, and is expected to be released this September!)

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