Discovery (Hush Liverpool Book 1)

I found it really special in “Discovery” by Melissa Tereze how the two main characters: Caroline (“Caz”) and Hannah (“Eva”) never really give up on their mutual attraction despite all the pain and the hurt they’ve both experienced in past relationships.Even though they both believe about themselves as being romantically and intimately broken, after their failed relationships, because of the past experiences and the emotional intelligence acquired during their lives, makes them think twice this time and give each other a chance. The title seems eloquent for both Caz and Hannah, suggesting their discovery of each other, finding one another, finding love and the discovery of finding themselves.Caroline “Caz” Baker is a highschool teacher in her late forties. Professionally she is doing just fine, but her love life is a mess, even after two years after her failed marriage with a psychologically abusive wife, Naomi, Caz is still trying to pull herself together, but none catches her eye, as her trust in women and her self-belief are really low at the moment, she only manages to rise up big walls around her heart. She is not an ice queen, she is a really warm, tender and sweet, but all her psychical scars, are yet not healed.Caz’s sister, Joy, and her best friend, Gail, plot and find a good solution for Caz’s issue: they book her an escort, “Eva”.At first, Caz doesn’t want to meet with “Eva”, because she believes she will only be doing her job and no real attraction or sparks will be there between them. With this misconception, Caz finally meets with “Eva” and the ground under her feet is shaken and she finds herself strongly attracted to “Eva’s” beauty and her striking cobalt eyes.The amazing blonde manages to keep Caz enhanced for the entire evening and she even tells Caz her real name: Hannah.Hannah Adams used to work as a personal assistant at a law firm (Jenkins), but they have let her and each of her colleagues go and she had to find a really fast way to support her daughter, Eddie, and herself, and all she could find was an escorting job. She really wants it to be temporary and she wishes to have a better job, as her previous one, again really soon.Hannah met many women as an escort, but she has never been so attracted to one of them as she was to Caz, and as much as she wants to let her feelings known, while flirting with the beautiful brunette with pained green eyes, wanting to make all her sadness go away, her heart is wary she’ll never see Caz again. She rethinks her position and she believes that Caz would never ever date an escort, so she keeps doing her job, but can’t hold back and ask Caz more personal questions than she has ever asked any of her clients, she also makes sure Caz knows she has never gone beyond dating clients and she even tells Caz her real name.Hannah is not confused by her feelings for Caz, but she, also, has a failed relationship in the past, when her former partner, Kirsty, has just left her and Eddie without a word and she wouldn’t want to invest get her heart broken again, if Caz won’t accept her job, at this point.Now, Caz is really confused by her feelings for Hannah and tries to hide her attraction to her.One of the turning points is when Caz and Hannah meet again, when Hannah’s daughter, Eddie Caffrey is involved in an incident at her highschool, and, Hannah is asked to come to get her, and, surprisingly, the teacher who presents her daughter is none other than Caz.Caz’s dream has always been to have a daughter. Her ex-wife denied her that dream.And, then, another turning point happens, when Juliet, one of Hannah’s best clients, sees her unhappy and after a short chat, offers her an assistant manager job at her own law firm.Hannah is really happy about her new job and she just want to convince Caz that she is the one for her.Caz, she finds herself attracted by thid beautiful woman with a very intelligent and wonderful daughter, she happens to teach and she can’t break their attraction no matter how hard she tries, at this point, she even finds herself wanting to spend more time with both of them, and she even get Hannah’s phone number from the school’s registry. Slowly, but surely, she knows her walls started to lower and she can’t deny anymore her love for Hannah and her instant fall for her daughter, seeing in her the daughter she has always wanted to have.Their love making is pure bliss and their relationship buds into something really wonderful.The last boundry in their happy relationship is Kirsty’s return, like nothing ever happened and she tries to take Eddie from school, lying she has Hannah’s permission. But, Caz won’t allow it and she gets hurt by Kirsty, but that just makes Kirsty go away for good.HEA is included.I absolutely recommend this wonderful age gap romance by Melissa Tereze, which will take you on a rollercoaster of emotions and real life experiences. I truly hope, there will be a next chapter into Caz’s and Hannah’s story.~Inkmarksonemptydreams

The first 60-70% of this book was a real struggle to get through, and I found myself having to walk away from it every several pages just to tame my own frustrations. Two years after leaving an emotionally and mentally abusive marriage, Caz is trying to put herself out there and get used to spending time with women again and hopefully start dating again. And by the suggestion and encouragement of her best friend, she agrees to start that journey with an escort because she knows there won't be any expectation of it going any further - there won't be any pressure or obligation of more than a conversation. There's an instant attraction between her and Hannah as "Eva," and that attraction makes both of them behave in ways that upend their evening and sets off a series of constant miscommunications and lack of communication, harsh comments shared between them (especially from Caz), and just a constant roller coaster of hot and cold emotions. And because neither of them has shared much about themselves, such as their pasts, current interests, goals, desires, and so forth, it makes no sense why either of them keep trying to make it work, especially from Hannah's perspective. The only "connection" they have at this point is a physical attraction, which is not a good enough reason to go through so much drama right out the gate - there's no foundation, no real hook in the heart that would make them want to make it work - it's all physical. Caz makes some pretty disrespectful comments and insinuations to Hannah, supposedly because of her own insecurities and jealousy, which makes the "budding" relationship even more toxic. Caz goes out of her way to apologize when she says something wrong, but for the first 50+% of the book, it just happens way too much. Caz's insecurities and doubt about Hannah being attracted to her are understandable and believable, especially given the abuse she suffered in her marriage. However, Caz being cruel to Hannah for the sake of "protecting" herself was not believable and it made Caz very unlikeable to the point that I wanted to reach into the book and tell Hannah to run away. In addition to the excessive amount of drama/angst, many of the thoughts and conversations became repetitive, and the events and pacing of this story relied too heavily upon contrived situations that became absurd after the second unlikely scenario. By the 70-75% mark, everything changes, everything starts to flow better, and the story actually becomes mostly enjoyable. It actually felt like two different stories, not just because of the drastic changes by the 70% mark, but because two of the main side characters just drop off the planet about a third way through and one is only mentioned a couple of times by the end of the book. When I finished, I had to sit and think "were they in this book or a different book?" I thought I was mixing up stories because of their very noticeable absence. It was good to see Caz grow and heal and learn to be confident in her own skin again, but the book needed quite a bit of heavy editing and retooling to give Caz a better journey to reach that point. Given how abusive her marriage had been, and how drastic her self-image and possible PTSD was from it even two years after the divorce, it would have been nice to see someone in her inner circle suggest and help her find a good therapist in the first 25-50% of the book to help her work through her emotions/past, instead of relying solely on Hannah's patience and constant forgiveness of Caz's knee-jerk behaviors to help her heal.

The books characters and story was fleshed out, they seemed like real people and was genuinely so enjoyable to read. Pick it up and give it a try, it's worth a bit of your time to read it.

Lovable characters, human frailty, compassionately portrayed. Nice look at what love is. Some surprises. I enjoyed it a lot. Would recommend.

I love this book. It is very well written and made me feel a the emotions. I loved all of the characters. Just made my heart happy.

I really enjoyed how all the characters came together. Hannah and Caroline story is a must read. It was a great story from beginning to end. Love how Edie was able to even love who her mom was dating. How sweet she was. This was a phenomenal book.

I love reading a new author and I love a beautiful story, this was both of those things. This story is complex and full, the characters are diverse and fully developed, the writing is good.Yes there's angst here. There's also plenty of love and lots of growth in love. I highly recommend this book.

I loved that it didn't have the kind of arguments that a lot of books have.It is a book that i really recommend.

Loved the way this started, unfolded and was revealed in the end! Another fantastic book by Melissa Teresa and can’t wait to meet more by her!

Lovely story the best part of this story when Caroline move on from the past how she trusted Hannah and Hannah alway right there for her

This book was so good. Edie is the cutest ever! Loved caz and Hannah. Especially reading Caz moving on from her past.

Great story, unusual way for MC's to meet.Enough angst from the characters and some unexpected aspects. A great tale.

This book was a real step forward from the last couple of books.Admittedly, the first half was the usual over the top self-deprecation of 'I want you, but I'm not good enough for you' back and forth from both characters but thankfully the second half really improved and steered well clear from clichéd angst moments and unrealistic drama and actually showed the relationship developing into something beliveable.I nearly gave up at half way through, but glad I stuck with it in the end for what ended up being a much more realistic second half.