The Last Great Almost by Quintana McConnell is now available on Amazon and KU!
What to expect:
Childhood Friends to Strangers to Lovers
Second Chance
Small Town
Found Family
Mental Health Rep
Second Coming-of-Age
Black Cat x Golden Retriever
BLURB
Phases fade. Eras echo.
You don’t always know you’re in one, until it’s gone.
When thirty-three year old Nora Lowe unexpectedly returns to her small Midwestern hometown, she must confront the ghost of her past: Elliott Ashby, the best friend and secret love she abandoned fifteen years ago. Nora never intended to go back to the boy who knew her better than she knew herself, but now the old feelings—and old secrets—are clawing their way out of the shadows.
Face-to-face for the first time since she fled, Nora and Elliott must decide if they can move beyond their troubled backgrounds, rumor mills, and wounds to embrace a future they never named. The alternative is the unraveling of everything they’ve built in the interim, and Nora’s continued struggle to break free from her past and find the love she feels worthy of.
Told in dual POV across layered timelines, The Last Great Almost is a slow-burning meditation on emotional imprinting, chosen family, and the quiet ways we carry each other—long after the moment has passed.
Sunny Shelly’s Review: 3.5 Stars
Childhood best friends Nora and Elliott haven’t spoken in a decade; not since everything changed between them and she left town and never looked back. Now, following a breakup, Nora returns home to lick her wounds, and she and Elliott are thrust back into one another’s lives… and the opportunity presents itself to heal some of the old heartbreak.
The story is a sweet, clean, second-chance romance, told in dual POV and in past and present. There was a lot of miscommunication between these characters, and I was kind of surprised at how not-that-big-of-a-deal Nora’s reason for leaving town was. I feel like it could have been settled much sooner had these two actually talked about it. But I did appreciate the always-been-you microtrope, and how Elliott never really moved past Nora’s leaving.
The Last Great Almost is the first book I’ve read by Quintana McConnell. Overall, I liked it; I didn’t *love* it. Will I come back to re-read it? Maybe.
I received an advanced copy and voluntarily left a review.
Sunny Shelly Reads 