REVIEW | For Three Seconds by C. Lynmari

Title: For Three Seconds
Author: C. Lynmari
Release Date: January 31, 2020
★★★★★

**Kindle Unlimited

I fell in love with Gavin Dunn when I was twelve. All it took was one game of spin the bottle and I was ruined.

One kiss, and three seconds, and no matter how many boys I kissed, they didn’t make me feel like he did.

The problem? He belonged to my best friend.

I kissed him first. She kissed him last.

He once chose me, and I chose her.

When everything in my life goes wrong, somehow he’s always there to make it right. And as my best friend pulls away, he finds ways to get closer. I know that we are just waiting for three seconds before everything changes again.

Honestly, this ended up being a pretty different book than I was expecting it to be, but not at all in a bad way. I was expecting something with a different kind of angst, but I feel like where this subverted my expectations it absolutely did it for the better. I'm not someone who has issues with cheating in romance novels if it's written well, I know that's a hard line for a lot of people but it really isn't for me, but luckily this book doesn't actually go there - at least not the way you think.

This book is about Scarlett and Gavin, who've been dancing around feelings for one another since they were 12 years old and kissed each other during a game of Spin The Bottle. The biggest obstacle being Scarlett's best friend Gigi, who always had a crush on Gavin. This book has a LOT of tropes that I'm drawn to and I think they were executed really, really well. 

I loved the two main characters in this book. Actually, scratch that, I think that all of the characters in this book were really, really well written and felt human. For me, being able to understand where characters are coming from and never have to question their motivations is so huge for me and I think this book did a really good job of weaving together a character driven story where the conflict, even when it was highly dramatic, felt real.

I loved Scarlett, I really did, and she broke my heart for a lot of the book. This girl had been through some shit and it really pushed her into herself in a way that made me just want to give her a hug. I also think that the fact that she was a character who put her friends' happiness above her own was really well represented as not just being because she was ohsogoodandisn'tshewonderfulmarysue but because of real insecurities that she had about herself and her place within her relationships. I'm finding it hard to articulate, but I just think she was so smartly written and human and flawed and wonderful and Ilovedhersomuch.

I also really liked Gavin, of course, who also felt really real to me. I think that sometimes people want to read a hero who pines for the heroine, never looking at another woman while he stays celibate and blahblahblah. I am NOT that reader, because that doesn't ring true to me and I honestly just think it's kind of unhealthy in a way that I find unattractive. I think that balance of his holding onto his feelings for her, while also being a teen/young adult male felt really real to me and made him much more appealing. 

Though it wasn't a huge part of the book, there was also a representation of female friends - both the toxic kind and the healthy kind - that I really liked. It didn't hit you over the head or really explicitly drive home a message, but it was there and it wove through the story, and that's always something that I really, really appreciate. 

This book jumps around a lot when it comes to the time line, slowly revealing the history between the two main characters in a way that I think really could have gone wrong if it hadn't been so well plotted. In the end, I really liked seeing the unraveling of the history between the characters and all of the things that kept them apart for so many years and those near misses and moments of intimacy that really built their relationship. For me, that slow and well timed unraveling gave the love story more weight here.

This book did have a Happily Ever Epilogue, which honestly really did make me want to deduct a half star from my rating because I hate it more and more with every book I read lately, but I just loved this book so much that I really couldn't do it. Would I have preferred it not be there at all? Yes, I absolutely would have, but in this case I don't think it took away from the book or left me with a bad taste in my mouth. So yay!

Loved this book, need more of this author!