Title: Waiting on Justin
Author: Lucy H. Delaney
Genre: New Adult
Rating: 4 stars
Purchase: Amazon
Review copy provided by Enchanted Book Promotions in exchange for an honest review.
Can everlasting love grow amidst never-ending despair? Best friends Justin and Haylee learn early on that the answer is yes. Their parents would rather spend time drinking and partying than raising children, so the two rely on each other for the care and emotional support they need. Over time, Justin and Haylee become lovers despite the age difference between them.
Theirs is a forbidden romance that would destroy them both if discovered.
The older of the two, Justin is more than a little rough around the edges. He does everything he can to protect Haylee from as much abuse as possible, but when tragedy strikes there is nothing he can to do keep her from being taken into the foster system.
The system meant to save kids threatens to pull the two of them apart.
Haylee begs Justin to run away with her, but the powers-that-be force him into an inescapable corner.
Blaming Justin for the distance that separates them, Haylee shuts out everything and everyone from her past – including Justin. She tries to forget him. She tries to replace him. But he is always there. So is her own addiction. When it finally gets the best of her, she finds herself utterly alone.
She soon discovers what Justin has always known: Their love was worth waiting for.
In Waiting on Justin, Haylee and Justin are two best friends. They didn’t have the easiest childhood. Their parents preferred drinking over raising their own children, so it was mostly up to the two of them to raise themselves. Justin, being the oldest, took on the role of caretaker. He was always there for Haylee, providing emotional support, helping her through hardships. They rely on each other for just about anything, and so, despite a four-year age difference, they fall in love, a forbidden romance that’ll destroy them both if it’s discovered.
But Haylee’s reality is shattered when she’s forced to move after her mother dies. She must go live with Aunt Aerin, and because of her age (as she’s still underage), she can’t live with Justin, nor have a relationship with him. While Justin doesn’t give up on the two of them, Haylee has a feeling he did, because when she asked him to run away with her, he refused. Now she won’t even open up his letters. She alienates herself from everyone, broken to the core. Will Justin be able to help fix her again, or has the damage been too much? Does their love stand a chance?
Waiting on Justin is a touching story, told from Haylee’s POV. I felt for her. She’s sympathetic, even if she’s a little rough around the edges. She’s a fighter, a survivor, strong, yet at the same time she pushes everyone away sometimes, and doesn’t let herself get close to anyone. Justin is protective, and he loves Haylee an awful lot. The depths of his love become clear throughout the novel, and the reader will probably grasp it a lot sooner than Haylee does. However, at times, Justin frustrated me too, probably because it was so easy to identify with Haylee and see things through her eyes, that when she got mad at Justin, I got mad at him too.
A touching, heart-warming story about love and its ability to change people for better or worse, about not giving up hope, and about friendship.
Giveaway
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