Jack Harrington told everyone who asked that he’d gotten over Connor a long time ago. And while he still hasn’t managed to convince himself, he moves on with his life. He doesn’t have a choice. Connor is gone for good.
Or is he?
Connor Warden didn’t plan to ever come back to Harrington Hills, but with an infant in tow, that is exactly what he does. His daughter needs a pack and he is going to give it to her.
When Jack and Connor’s lives literally collide again, will they be able to go back to what had been and find their connection once more? Or is the divide between them too deep to ever fully get over?
If the second-chance theme is your jam, then this is your book. There are so many things and so many moments I loved in this story and I liked that the author took the story back to its shifter roots. The first book, Leading Me Home was friends-to-lovers, it was also pretty family/pack centric. The dynamics of the MC’s and the family were core to the story. Building a Home, the second in the series, was all about MC’s with an age difference with a side of hurt/comfort, but it moved away from the pack a bit and the story could have been about just two contemporary dudes and not having anything to do with shifters. It was a good story, I enjoyed the MC’s muchly, but I did miss the shifter world the author created. It’s a unique family setup compared to typical shifter stories, the alpha and beta are a committed lesbian couple and we just don’t see enough female alphas depicted as far as I’m concerned, so I was pretty happy Mom A and Mom B are more present in Coming Back Home.
And it makes sense, one of the MC’s, Jack Harrington, is their son and it doesn’t matter if your mom is an alpha to a wolf pack or carpooling a soccer team, she’s still a mama bear at heart. But, big props to Mom A as she protected her son as his mom and Conner as his alpha; I obviously have a lot of respect for her character :D. Jack and Conner were split apart after teen love and angst had taken hold when Conner left Harrington Hills. And this is part of what I love about Coming Back Home, the realistic flavor of the relationship between Jack and Conner. It’s also part of what kept me from rating the story higher than I did.
Jack and Conner had such a close and comforting relationship as young men, but to believe they would get their HEA while still in high school is a bit ridiculous. So, the split was heartbreaking, but it made their cautious reunion more real and the HEA as adults believable. What was missing was the backstory. It’s referred to in bits and by the end I knew all the facts, but I wanted all the nuances that made these two grow from idealistic boys to grown men with responsibilities and families. I would have loved to read their growth and what drove their decisions. I mean, I know what drove them because I was told, but I did want more.
But, what story I did get from Jack and Conner, and their present world was so good. They danced carefully around one another, but I knew both their thoughts, so I could read with confidence where they were coming from and they never tortured one another, or more importantly, me, with miscommunication or unnecessary angst. I think because their adult relationship was so well done was why I wanted the first phase of their relationship so badly.
The cautious optimism grew between Jack and Conner, it made an HEA between them inevitable and it was a warm fuzzy road along the way once they opened up to one another. The last thing I would want is a conversation between Mom A and Conner, I’m hoping that gets revisited in the next book because Conner is in need of some parental support.
Coming Back Home is a lovely comfort read with a second chance theme that totally worked for the adult side of Jack and Conner. I do hope they make an appearance in the next in the series, as I do have complete confidence in forever for Jack and Conner, I want to see some love for Conner in the Harrington family, that would complete my happy for them.
**a copy of this story was provided for an honest review**
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