She’s hard to hold onto, but he’s good with his hands…
Prickly, autistic, and shadowed by a scandalous past, Ruth Kabbah will always be Ravenswood’s black sheep. It’s a lonely life, but at least it’s safe… until Evan Miller comes to town.
Calm, confident, and instantly accepted by their small English town, Evan is Ruth’s opposite in every way—yet he meets her suspicion with a smile, handles her awkwardness with ease, and watches her with a hunger that threatens to tear down her all her defences.
The gossips want to know how she’s bewitched him. Ruth just wants to know when he’ll get bored and leave. Because if there’s one thing she’s learned, it’s that girls like her don’t get happily ever afters.
But when a monster from Ruth’s past comes back to haunt her, she’s forced to make a choice: should she trust Evan completely? Or is her heart safest alone?
Release Date: Mar 3, 2026
Series: Ravenswood
Format: Print
Book: 1
Heat Level: Hot
Publisher: Sourcebooks
Imprint: Casablanca
Price: $18.99
Hibbert’s re-release of her first novel had me in a chokehold.
This is the first book in her Ravenswood series. If you enjoy inclusive, diverse romance, this book is a great place to start. It’s also full of small-town drama that reminded me of that soap opera feel that reels you in. From the first pages, I wanted to know every last piece of tea, all the scandalous secrets.
Ruth Kabbah has one helluva secret, one she’s kept to herself all while allowing an entire town to paint a different picture of her… a not-so-flattering, insulting picture that’s made her a town pariah. She likes her life this way, accepting that this is exactly what she deserves. That all of this is her fault. Ruth is resigned to her life of comics, hiding in her home unless she absolutely needs to leave (like Sunday family dinners), and pretending the hateful stares and rude comments don’t bother her. Everything is fine until she gets a new neighbor, an incredibly smoking hot specimen of a man who is suddenly bringing her home-cooked meals to be… nice.
Evan is starting over. Ex-military with not a lot of opportunities, the welding job in Ravenswood seemed a blessing. He’s already making friends at work, and at home… well, his neighbor worries him. She’s eating like a teenager and doesn’t have a stove. She needs a little help and maybe some company. Evan can’t help but like her, even if she is the grumpiest woman he’s ever met. Not to mention she’s smoking hot. When the boss’s son tells Evan to stay away, he can’t help but figure out why. The journey to that answer results in falling, hard.
This one is all twisty, a bit of a slow burn with plenty of heat. I don’t want to give away any of the backstory and the scandal that deserves to be read directly on the page. But the character development is spot on. The pacing matches the story, and this one hit all the buttons. I could not put it down. If you love Tracy Livesay or Nina Crespo, I high recco Talia Hibbert.
~ Landra