A Love Restrained by Becky Flade – Review by Dr. Anya Schultz

A Love Restrained by Becky Flade
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A Love Restrained is a contemporary, suspense romance about two people who had a short highschool history together, but find each other again years later. Kylee Parker is a Philadelphia police officer who loves her job. While observing the streets, she sees a drug deal go down and chases down the dealer. While she is trying to arrest him, she recognizes that voice, Jayson Donovan, the boy who broke her heart in highschool. Jayson is quite excited to be getting arrested by her, because what she doesn’t know is that he had always had a thing for her and the fact that her heart was broken was a lot of misunderstandings. Jayson was abused and had a rough home life, but he did have a savior! After being arrested by Kylee, Donovan sees this as his chance to make amends and go after what he has always wanted, so he sends her different plants and flowers, with a note asking her to dinner. Kylee is cautious but can’t seem to eventually keep saying no. That original yes turns into the two of them dating and falling for each other. However, Donovan’s past is sad, complicated, and his present seems to go against all of her morals. Can all of his past and the secrets of his present continue in their relationship or will it eventually ruin this beautiful love story?
I really enjoyed this story. As a person who works in the field of psychology, it was great to see just how much love, even from strangers, can change the course of someone’s life within this story. I thought the flow of the story made you feel like you were walking through their life. While on this “walk”, you could feel all the things they were going through, the ups, the downs, the love, the secrets, etc. However, at no point in time did I ever not like one of the main characters, even through the hardship. Just the way the information was presented you felt like something was going on you couldn’t put your finger on, but knew it would work out in the end (I am not really sure why, it has been a while since I felt that in a book). You truly feel for each of these characters at all the twists and turns that the story takes you on. I was actually pretty surprised, in some sense, about how the story turned out.

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