Jude & Sarah’s Story Is About Second Chances! Their Mature Love Is Colored By Their Troubled Pasts, But Together They Find A Path Forward That Heals Their Open Wounds.
This is the second book in the 47 Things series. It is Jude Baker and Sarah Kennedy-Lohan’s story. It reads as a standalone, although the story is more full and tremendously enriched by having first read book one in the series. Like the first book, this book is a tear-jerker, but as devastating as it is, the love story is incredibly worthwhile.
This book opens one year and three months following the epilogue in book one, which celebrated little Ty Lohan Junior’s birthday. It begins October 20, 2016 – six years from the day of the infamous gum incident that finally brought Tyler and Sarah together. In this story, Sarah’s future begins to shift on a second fateful day when an arrogant professor slips on the piece of gum that she spits onto the sidewalk in memory of Tyler.
Sarah Kennedy-Lohan, twenty-seven, has been in mourning for nearly five years. Tyler left her and this world behind before she even knew she was pregnant with his child. She remains in the apartment he left her with their four-year-old son, Ty, and keeps Tyler’s room as shrine to him. Susan Lohan, Tyler’s mom, remains nearby and helps out with Ty while Sarah works as a physiotherapist. The two have grown quite close over the years, but the pain of their loss remains. The burden of Tyler’s absence weighs more and more heavily on Sarah as she tires of the darkness. His ghost visits her, reminding her of her promise to smile again, to live a full life, and to find love and a new happily ever after. She also realizes how unfair it is to burden little Ty with being the primary source of her happiness. Still, she believes that Tyler is her one and only forever love, and has no inclination to move on. Just as she does each year, when the anniversary of the day that brought them together arrives, Sarah grabs a piece of gum and returns to the university sidewalk where Tyler and she had finally met.
Jude Baker, thirty-two, lectures at Sydney University and works part-time on campus as a speech therapist. He loves books and enjoys deep intellectual conversation. He lives a rather quiet and solitary life, and has largely given up on dating. His stepmother had moved him and his younger brother and sister to Australia from their native England when he was seventeen. Soon afterward, he left home and began his university studies. People tend to consider him arrogant, though he prefers to think of himself as blunt and truthful.
Jude’s life gets caught up in Sarah’s when he steps onto the hunk of gum that she spits on the sidewalk in memory of Tyler, marking the same spot that his gum had tripped her six years earlier. He is far from pleased, and when it turns out that they live in the same apartment building things go further south. Despite that awful beginning, however, Sarah senses something in Jude. And for the first time since Tyler, she begins to wonder if she might one day be happy again.
For those that read Tyler and Sarah’s story, the raw pain that Sarah feels as she battles through her darkness is real. Tyler was larger than life and a hard act to follow. He was loved by all, and the enthusiasm with which he lived his life was infectious. Sarah was stubborn. She was more bookish and independent. But Tyler challenged her to live life in the moment and be adventurous. To cherish each day. He had lived to make her smile, and her smile had been little more than a mask for nearly five years. Sarah finds that smile again when she meets the bumbling, stammering British professor. Jude is a nerdy heartthrob who happens to get adorably nervous around Sarah once his anger over their initial meeting recedes. And when she and Ty bump into him near home, it is bittersweet to see Tyler’s little boy take so quickly to him. Tyler remains a part of this story, though. He is the love of Sarah’s life and serves as a counselor. Don’t worry – Tyler and Sarah’s love story is handled respectfully even though she begins the process of moving on.
Jude and Tyler are entirely different men at first glance, but when it becomes clear that Jude, too, has some secrets in his past it raises all kinds of red flags with Sarah. They, too, have challenges as their relationship shifts from strangers to friends, and later when they begin to date. But all along Sarah holds onto the idea that Tyler had something to do with bringing her and Jude together – with another hunk of gum on the same spot that he and she met. After many tears, Jude, Sarah, and Ty earn a happily ever after.
Grab the tissues! By my count there were twenty-two teary moments (some of them blended together into longer episodes). Jude and Sarah’s story is about second chances. Their mature love is colored by their troubled pasts, but together they find a path forward that heals their open wounds. The writing is beautiful and thoughtful. There are some minor editing issues. The plot is complex. The characters are carefully crafted and three dimensional. The story is written in first person in Sarah’s POV. Excerpts from Tyler’s journal are in his POV. I rate this book 4.5 stars.
I received an advance copy of this book and am voluntarily leaving a review.