It’s a peaceful Tuesday morning here in sunny Northamptonshire. The usual routine begins—a strong cup of tea, a quick glance at my inbox to check for anything urgent, and then a discreet look at my author notifications and stats. Most days, it’s all quite routine, a swift check before settling at my desk to focus on my daily tasks.
But today, I saw something that made me stop dead in my tracks.
I found a review for A Healing Love on Goodreads from a reader named Emelia.
As an author, you pour pieces of your heart and soul onto the page. You spend months, sometimes years, with your characters, trying to make their struggles, their growth, and their emotional lives feel real. For Paul and me, the relationship has already spanned four books and fifteen long years, with at least one more book and a couple of more years to go before I’m finished with him.
Then you send that book out into the world, and it feels like a silent conversation you’ve just begun. You wait, hoping someone will hear it and respond. Emelia’s review was that response, and it was as thoughtful and articulate a review as I have ever received.
She described the book as an exploration of “what happens when love and ambition collide, and when healing requires both holding on and knowing when to let go,” and she observed the essence of Paul’s journey, recognising that his development was “gradual, believable, and deeply satisfying.”
This was a vital comment for me because healing isn’t something you can instantly achieve. There’s no switch you can flip. It’s a gradual, chaotic, and often painful journey of facing your past mistakes, your deepest fears, and the person you once were. For Paul, whom we first met in “A Good Man,” this journey has been long. He had to believe in his future before he could invite someone else to share it.
Hearing that his struggle felt authentic is everything I could have hoped for.
This is why Emelia’s description of the romance as “heartfelt and messy in all the best ways” felt so rewarding. Genuine love, especially love that follows loss, is seldom neat and straightforward. It’s complicated by ambition, fear, and history. It demands a level of self-awareness and bravery that can only be gained through hard-earned growth.
But the line that truly took my breath away was her final summary of the story’s theme: that “sometimes the bravest thing you can do for love is to face yourself first.”
In that single sentence, I felt that silent conversation between author and reader click perfectly into place. She didn’t just read the story; she saw the heart of it, the very question I was exploring as I wrote it.
Paul’s journey since the end of “A Good Man” has been largely one of self-discovery and healing. We see the man Paul becomes in the prologue and epilogue of “A Good Man”, in the prologue of “A Wounded Heart”, and the entire Saga—all four books so far, plus the fifth book I have started working on—has been recounting his journey to become that man.
The Paul we see at the end of “A Healing Love” is the closest we’ve come to seeing who he will become. He’s not there yet, but he’s well on the way.
“A Good Man” revealed what caused Paul so much damage and pain.
“A Tortured Soul” depicted his struggle to accept the extent of the damage and cope with that pain.
“A Wounded Heart” marked his initial steps towards recovery.
And “A Healing Love” shows us Paul working out exactly who he is and who he wants to be. He does indeed “face himself” first so that he can become the person he needs to be for the people he loves.
There is no greater gift for a writer than to feel understood. It serves as a reminder that these stories we create are more than mere words; they are bridges.
So, thank you, Emelia, not just for the 5-star rating, but for taking the time to share such beautiful, insightful words. And thank you to every reader who takes a chance on a book and joins the conversation. You are the reason I do this.
If you’d like to read Emelia’s full review, you can find it here.
