From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Fourth Wing comes a new contemporary romance about the summer a celebrated dancer returns home and unearths years of family secrets and deep regrets with the Coast Guard rescue swimmer she never forgot.
Elite ballerina Allie Rousseau is no stranger to pressure. With her mother’s eyes always watching, perfection was expected, no matter the cost. But when an injury jeopardizes all she’s sacrificed for, Allie returns to her summer home to heal and recover. But the memories she’s tried to forget rush in and threaten to take her under.
As a Coast Guard rescue swimmer, Hudson Ellis knows that hesitation can mean the difference between life and death. He’s always prided himself on being in the right place at the right time, especially when it came to Allie Rousseau…until the night he left for basic. After the biggest regret of his life, the secrets he keeps mean he can never be with the one woman he wants more than his next breath.
When Hudson’s niece shows up on Allie’s doorstep, desperate to find her birth mother, Allie finds herself in an unimaginable position. Allie and Hudson’s past and present might be endlessly complicated. The thread that tied them to each other all those years ago may have unraveled, but the truth could pull them back together, or drive them apart forever.
I would have had to be living under a rock to have never heard of Rebecca Yarros but it's her contemporary romance rather than her fantasy novels that became my first Rebecca Yarros book. Variation is a romance that is filled with family drama and a will they/won't they pair of main characters whose hearts tell them that they are destined to be together but their heads say the opposite.
Allie and Hudson are meant to be together and even though the tide may take them away from each other it always seems to bring them back to shore. There are lots of reasons why ballerina Allie and rescue swimmer Hudson can't be together and most of that is geography but some of it is a deeply buried secret that if it comes out could tear them apart forever.
I absolutely adored the gorgeous love story that had me rooting for Allie and Hudson from the start. There are a few steamy scenes to increase the reader's heartrate but I found Hudson's audible stamping of ownership on Allie to be a little annoying.
At the heart of the story is a dysfunctional family of four sisters: Lina who died, Anne who became a lawyer and Allie and Eva who are following in their mother's footsteps as ballet dancers. Lina is painted as the perfect sister, Allie is the guilty one who holds herself responsible for Lina's death, Anne is the disappointment who didn't become a dancer and Eva is the spoilt envious one; it's like a series of Dallas or Dynasty set in the world of ballet.
Filled with cliffhangers, and told from different points of view, Variation is a veritable page turner as I couldn't read fast enough to continue where each character left off. It felt so finely balanced as to whether they could ever become more than a fling and you will just have to read it to find out what happens in the end.
I received a gifted copy to read as part of the Tandem Collective readalong and this is my honest and unbiased opinion.
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