Before Ryan Was Mine

by Kahlen Aymes

Like meeting up with old friends after too long apart, this book took me back to the beginning of not only Ryan and Julia’s story but mine too.
The Remembrance Trilogy probably had a bigger impact on my reading genre and selections initially than any other book, it was so totally encapsulating and I was hooked from then on.
It was strange going into a book already knowing all too well how the story ends, but it was just breath taking to get to experience more of this passionate love story, the untold but much hinted connection that was embedded in both Ryan and Julia from the very beginning
The initial contact, literally the second Ryan lies eyes on Julia, the story take flight!
It swoops and soars as it gives us all the special little moments that the two of them have, I loved that fact that we got to see, hear and feel the emotions that engulf the pair of them.
Living so close but so far is torture for Ryan, he spends every day with Julia as his best friend when really he wants nothing more than for her to truly be HIS!
But risking a relationship is not something he is not confident enough to try, his worse-case scenario is that they would fail and he would lose her from his life and that is a risk that he is not prepared to take. He NEEDS her and is not willing to risk not having her even if it means loving her from a metaphorical distance, because physically being distant is not an option, one day without her is one day too many!
But that is not to say that he is a gentleman about his feelings, he doesn’t make it easy on her because despite the fact that he wants nothing more than to have her to himself, he gets defensive about his feelings and all too often I had the impression that his jealousy had gotten the better of him, he determined what he wanted and at times it was to Julia’s detriment… if he wasn’t ready to man up, he could have stepped aside but he was never going to let anyone have his Julia and he did what it took to ward off any suitors that Julia may have had.
Julia is just as smitten, how could she not be.. Ryan is divine but like Ryan she can’t see a future without him in it and because of that we are with her every single torturously gut wrenching minute of every date that she knows he is on. She tries, she really does to be happy for him but this pair are so completely besotted by each other but they are running scared from the what if’s in life.
Neither can bring themselves to take the final step, to trust their hearts to lead them straight and to accept that together is exactly where they are destined to be.
A welcome addition to one of the best series on the market!!!