Saved by Love by Toni Aleo
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Encouraging, reassuring, promising, and heartening are just some of the words that come to mind when I think about this book!! Saved by Love is a story about two young individuals’s journey to a better mental health life through loving each other. Callie is a young woman who was raised by her sister and brother-in-law (an NHL player with autism) after her mother died and dad abandoned them. She is a strong-minded, independent woman who is an amazing gymnast for her college, who also volunteers for the autism center. The new gymnastics trainer, Evan, is a hot, smart, slightly broken, retired NHL star who came back to college to figure things out. While both of them are familiar with each other, due to Evan playing with her brother-in-law in the NHL, he doesn’t recognize her at first although she is smitten with him from the start. While the entire school is hitting on him, she takes a different approach to gain his attention, they become running partners and friends. That camaraderie quickly turns into something more, deeper, beyond the physical. The two of them start to take a journey that neither of them want to come back from.

This book was completely unexpected in the most amazing ways. One, there was no bullshit between the main characters – I love the fact that they continued to fight and support each other and never went through angst or regret amongst themselves. Also, as a mental health professional, I may be slightly biased, but the fact is that this book centered around “disabilities” and mental health in athletes made me fall in love with it more than I thought I would. It is definitely a topic that isn’t talked about enough in books, and the fact that much of the issues was the male character was even more amazing; to see things from the male point of view which is still considered pretty taboo today. The other aspect that completely drew me in were the two main characters. Callie, while she struggles with her own things, you can see the work she has put in. She is beautiful inside and out and became a wonderful foundation for Evan. However, Evan, oh my, I am so in love with him. From the beginning of the book, you can feel his pain and you just want to reach out and hug him. The way he goes about improving his own mental health, it just took a lot of bravery and you could totally feel it in the character. Also, I don’t want to give anything away, but there is one major aspect about him that just makes him so endearing, which really goes against everything we know about hot athletes. The growth he does because of Callie’s love is just remarkable and really inspiring. The fact that his family members were also amazing characters just made me love him and the life he leads even more. This book really shows you that mental health is a problem for so many and really needs to be discussed more – not frowned upon. Also the support that Evan receives is a great reminder to others that you don’t know what people are going through and you should be kind and just love a person for where they are. Mental health issues are not someone being weak, it is someone who needs a little bit of help to get back on their journey!!

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