Toe the Line

From New York Times best-selling author Penelope Ward comes a friends-to-lovers story spanning more than a decade....

At first, I thought I’d hate spending the summer with Archie Remington—the conceited son of my parents’ friends. What I knew about Archie: He was gorgeous, pre-law, and had always treated me like I didn’t exist when we were younger. When our families bought a house together on an island in Maine, he and I were forced to share a bathroom.

The boy I remembered was now a full-grown man—but with the same attitude. After a rough start, Archie and I unexpectedly started getting along one day and eventually became friends. We shared secrets and bonded during our morning jogs. I discovered that Archie had a wild spirit and that he struggled to conform to his father’s expectations.

Things were cool until I had to go and ruin it, getting drunk one night, and blurting out my fantasy—involving him.

I took it back, but it was too late. Archie had heard me loud and clear. After that, we never quite knew how to toe the line. When that summer came to an abrupt and shocking end, I headed back to college, unsure if anything would ever be the same again. Across the miles over the years, he and I stayed in touch as friends, but fate and timing always kept us from becoming more.

You know the saying: If two people are meant to be, they’ll find their way back to each other?

Let’s just say Archie came back into my life in a way I would’ve never expected. And this time, my heart would really be put to the test.

©2022 Penelope Ward (P)2023 Penelope Ward

Overall pretty good.

Here's my take on this story. Sometimes you can have to many bad things happen in a story and it will totally turn you off. The story started off great loved the character building and the development along the way. Then boom bad after bad after bad. It's like geesh how much sadness are you going to give us before we completely stop listening. In this story I feel as if the bad was drawn out and it was not enough good. Then towards the end everything wanted to fall into place but it happened very quickly. Then boom again I mean come on you guys could have truly given them all of a happily ever after. Overall it was just an ok story with steamy scenes and great narration. Had so much potential but limited by the over use of terrible things happening. My stars are for narration mostly and the good parts of this story.

All the feels

Wonderful characters, never any lulls to the story, it was just beautiful & I didn’t want it to end!
The narration was perfection as well. All together it’s a 15/10 for me.

Frustrating But Inspiring

Throughout the entire book, the 2 main characters always steered towards other people...never to each other. The male character was burdened with many issues which affected his relationships. Both relied on each other realizing their true feelings.

Heartwarming

I cried, laughed and really felt the emotions of the characters. The description of the locations made me feel like I was there.

The love story

I really loved this love story I enjoyed watching it develop over the course of time. The only comment I will make is that I felt like it ended quickly, but I loved how it ended.