Bound by Secrets by Amy McKinley
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This book starts with Kayla Kane staring at the tv where she watches her boyfriend leaving the ring where he has just won his latest fight, but he is leaving with another woman and Kayla is enraged and plans to confront him when he gets home, but what happens when she does prompts her to leave as soon as she comes around. It isn’t the first time she has been abused by him, but this time, he took it too far and so she throws her belongings into a suitcase and bag and grabs her surfboard before putting as much distance as she can between her and the man she is going to leave behind. Jaxon Hale is tying up his stint as a beat officer with the local police where he has been working to see if it is a career he wants to follow, however, he is not happy and has decided to leave to join the team where his older brother works instead. When he goes into his local coffee shop, he is more than surprised to see Kayla, his first love and the woman he has had feelings for half his life, but she is hiding something and he won’t stop until he finds out what it is.

While they were in the coffee shop, an alert came through on Jaxon’s phone which looked like an attack, but when he arrives at the station, he realises that he is going to be getting nothing out of the officer on the case, so when his brother contacts him and confirms his suspicions, he knows that there is something else going on because he should be enjoying his honeymoon and adding into the fact that they can’t contact his brother as he is on a mission, Jaxon feels like he can’t do anything and he doesn’t like that feeling in the slightest. Meanwhile, Kayla goes to visit her parents, but when she gets there, she discovers that they are selling the house and Kayla isn’t happy that she will be losing another bit of her childhood and the memories forged there with her dead brother, but she tries to accept this unwelcome bit of news, but when she heads upstairs to start helping them to pack, she decides to start in her brothers room which she knows is going to be the hardest one to pack away and this is solidified when the memories come flooding back. Later on, she hears another voice and goes downstairs to find that Jaxon is there and it turns out his parents are moving to his old condo and that he came over to find out about paint choices so he could start redecorating so it is ready for them and remembering that there is a spare room, Kayla realises that this is the perfect answer to the situation with Roy and asks if she can stay there and help with the painting, Jaxon agrees, however, she is not sure how staying in the same house as him is going to work seeing as she has had the biggest crush on him for half her life.

As the time passes and Kayla and Jaxon spend more time with each other, they both realise that the time has come to talk about what happened in their past, but also about the present as well and the more they start to learn about the secrets surrounding them, the closer they become, but are the secrets they hold going to be a barrier they cannot surpass, or will they be able to build the future they have always wanted together? As the tension rises and patterns emerge, can the two work together to solve the mysteries surrounding them? This is a fast paced romance with secrets and revelations abound within it, but that is what will keep you reading until the very end.

Reviewed by @roxsannel

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