Author: Charity Ferrell
Publication date: 2020
Publisher: Charity Ferrell LLC
Genre: romance
Language: english
Rate 3.5/5 ⭐️ | 2/10 🌶️
The plot:
First comes love. Then comes marriage … and then comes a baby in a baby carriage.
The first time we spoke he tried to bribe me, and I called his bluff. That became friendship … then first loves. I steal his heart, he steals mine. But we keep that our secret, hidden in fear of ruining our friendship. Until one night, we cross a line.
I have secrets I never want him to know, but he won’t allow me to push him away. He’s ready to become more than friends, but will that change when he learns what I’ve done?
Just friends tells the story of Rex & Carolina (aka Lina). The two know each other since high school and start talking when he asks her to do his paper on Shakespeare. In the end, he did it by himself because the two spend the afternoon and the following ones watching movies and playing video games, getting to know each other better.
This relationship soon grows into a friendship that lasts for years, until one day Lina comes to him with a request: to have sex so she doesn't have to go to college as a virgin. From that moment on, although the relationship between the two doesn't change, the feelings they have for each other, however, amplify, until they become evident to everyone except those directly concerned. Feelings that they keep hidden so they don't have to give up friendship if something goes wrong.
In fact, their love story began as a lie: Rex offers to accompany Lina to her cousin's wedding so she doesn't have to be alone. But you know, in a small town news spreads within a short time and the two hadn't thought about the consequences of their act. So all they just have to carry on this fake relationship.
However, they're aware that taking the path of "friendship with benefits" is no longer possible at this point, not as they did years before. Because now everything has changed.
So while Rex is reluctant to embark on anything serious, he decides to give it a try anyway. Succeeding, because as Rex himself says, "they've practically been dating since high school" even if they've never given each other a label.
At this point, however, a problem arises: there's still a secret that Rex doesn't know and of which he only knows part of the story: the relationship between James and Carolina, a complicated mess from which Lina can't get out. But as they say, all the knots come home to roost.
The relationship between the two was born by chance and had to remain a secret the entire time because (spoiler!) he's a professor. However, all of this becomes even more complicated when Lina discovers that he slept with her roommate and tries to leave him, which is not possible because he is blackmailing her (with what I leave you to find out).
But as they say, all's well that ends well.
Charity Ferrell with her simple but effective writing managed to keep us glued to this story and eager to know the truth and to discover this secret, which torments the protagonist from the first chapter, until the end of the book, making this novel also distinguish from the others with similar plots for the themes it includes. In this case she highlights the dilemma of most (if not all) women: trust who is on the other side of the screen, even if you know them. Because, even if every action has a consequence and you have to learn to take responsibility for it, in this case the fear of some kind of repercussion (especially if the photos are used as leverage) is justified and up to now, not even I've understood what I would do if should happen to me, I don't know about you!
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