Never Too Far

I picked up Never Too Far because the end of Too Far left me annoyed in that specific way only a cliffhanger romance can. Blaire Wynn had just learned that Rush Finlay, the rich boy with the beach house and the soft spot for her, had been lying to her for weeks. Not little lies. Big ones about his family, about his stepsister Nan, about a small boy hardly anyone mentions. Blaire walked away. I wanted to know if Glines could make me forgive Rush, because at that point I did not. This is the second book in the Rosemary Beach series, published in 2013 by Simon and Schuster, 257 pages in the paperback I tracked, and it starts almost exactly where the first book stopped.

What fell apart at the end of book one

To make sense of this book you have to remember how tangled book one got. Blaire came to Rosemary Beach with almost nothing after her mother died. Her father had a new family and a summer house there, and she hoped he would help her get on her feet. Instead she found Rush living next door, the son of a famous rock star, handsome in a way that made everyone stare, kind to her in private and cagey about everything that mattered.

Rush let Blaire stay in his guest house. He hired her to clean for him. He fell for her fast, and she fell for him even though she told herself not to. What he did not tell her was that his stepsister Nan was working hard to ruin Blaire, or that Nan had a history of cruel schemes that Rush kept covering up. He also did not tell her about his connection to a little boy, a secret he kept because he thought the truth would hurt more people than the lie.

Blaire learned pieces of it in the worst ways. She heard things from other people. She saw Nan act sweet in front of Rush and vicious the second he turned away. The final break came when Blaire realized Rush had chosen silence over and over, even when his silence let Nan hurt her. She left Rosemary Beach with her older truck and her pride cracked. That is where Never Too Far opens, with Blaire gone and Rush left to sit in what he did.

I liked that Glines does not soften that recap. The first chapters let Blaire be angry without turning her into someone unrecognizable. She replays the lies in her head while she drives. She thinks about her mother, about the money she never had, about how stupid she feels for trusting a boy who had every reason to protect his own world first. It feels true to a nineteen year old who has been let down by adults before and told herself she would not be fooled again.

Blaire tries to build a life somewhere else

Blaire does not go far in miles so much as she goes far in attitude. She finds work as a waitress in a small town outside the Rosemary Beach bubble. She rents a cheap room. She keeps her head down. The job scenes are some of my favorites because they show what Blaire is good at when no one is rescuing her. She remembers orders. She handles rude customers. She counts tips at night and puts most of it aside. She buys groceries with coupons and learns which manager will let her pick up extra shifts.

She also tries to cut Rush out of her daily thoughts, which of course does not work. She changes her number for a while. She does not check his messages. She tells herself that love should not require this much repair work. Her father calls, and those calls are painful. He wants to help now, after failing her for years, and Blaire does not know what to do with that. She wants a parent and she also wants to tell him it is too late. Glines writes those phone calls in short bursts, and they land because Blaire never says the whole speech she is clearly holding back.

A new coworker, a girl with a loud laugh who offers Blaire rides and leftover pie, gives Blaire a glimpse of normal friendship. There is also a decent guy at work who flirts in a harmless way and offers to fix her truck. Blaire does not jump into anything with him, and I was glad. She is not ready, and the book does not force a triangle just to fill pages. The point of this section is simple. Blaire can survive without Rush. She did before. She pays rent. She eats. She sleeps, though not well at first. That matters because when Rush shows up again, she is not choosing him from hunger or panic.

One night she gets sick with a fever and has to miss shifts, and that small crisis shows how thin her safety net is. No paid time off. No family nearby. She worries about rent in a practical way, not a dramatic way. I found those details more moving than the big speeches later, because they remind you Blaire is young and alone and still getting up for morning shifts.

Rush stays behind and has to look at himself

Back in Rosemary Beach, Rush is miserable, and Glines lets him sit in it. He drinks too much. He snaps at friends. He stares at the empty guest house. His mother and stepfather are no help, wrapped up in their own money and image. Rush has always been the fixer in that family, the one who smooths things over when Nan causes harm, and without Blaire as a reason to be better, he slides back into old habits.

What I appreciated here is that Rush narrates some chapters himself. In the first book we mostly saw him through Blaire, all charm and secrets. Here we get his head, and it is not flattering. He admits he lied because he wanted to keep Blaire a little longer before the truth scared her off. He admits he protected Nan out of guilt and habit, not because Nan deserved it. He knows his father, the rock star Dean Finlay, left a mess of expectations, and he knows money made it easy to pay for problems instead of facing them.

His friend Woods Kerrington gets a lot of page time in this middle stretch, and I liked that. Woods is dealing with his own complicated relationship with Della, and watching Woods try to be steady makes Rush see how unsteady he has been. Woods tells him straight that chasing Blaire with grand gestures will not work if he still hides things. Rush hates hearing it. He tries to argue that he was trying to protect Blaire from Nan and from the truth about the boy. Woods does not let him off. That friendship feels lived in, full of teasing and late night drives and honest talk on a porch.

Rush also has to deal with Nan directly, and those scenes are tense. Nan acts as if Blaire leaving is a win. She posts photos. She flirts with guys to make Rush jealous. She hints she might be pregnant, which sends Rush into a panic because Nan has used that claim before to control people. Rush starts checking her stories instead of just believing her, calling doctors offices, asking questions he should have asked a year earlier. It is slow work, and Glines shows him failing at it before he gets better at it.

How Nan's lies come undone

Nan is the engine of most of the conflict, and she is also the weakest part of the book, but let me lay out what happens before I complain. Nan has spent years telling different stories to different people. To Rush, she plays the fragile stepsister who needs protection. To her friends, she plays the queen who can get any guy and ruin any girl. To adults, she plays the misunderstood daughter of a messy blended family.

In Never Too Far, those stories start to clash. Blaire learns from someone outside the inner circle that Nan was never pregnant by Rush, and that Nan spread rumors about Blaire to isolate her. There is a scene at a clinic where paperwork does not match Nan's claims, and a friend of Nan's admits she was told to lie about seeing Blaire with another guy. None of this arrives as a single courtroom reveal. It comes in texts, in slipped comments, in a voicemail Blaire almost deletes.

The strongest unraveling involves the little boy. I will keep this vague to leave something for new readers, but the truth is sadder and kinder than the gossip made it sound. Rush has been helping support the child quietly, visiting when he can, keeping his name out of papers because the mother asked for privacy and because his family feared scandal. That secrecy made it look like shame. Once Blaire hears the full story from a source who has no reason to flatter Rush, a nurse and later the mother herself in a brief meeting, her anger shifts. She still hates that Rush lied, but she sees why he thought telling the truth badly would hurt a kid who did nothing wrong.

Nan tries one last big manipulation near the two thirds mark, claiming she is pregnant and hinting Rush is responsible or connected, hoping it will reach Blaire and end things for good. Rush finally refuses to play along. He demands proof. He talks to his lawyer. He tells his stepfather he will not pay to make another Nan story go away. When the test comes back negative and a friend confirms Nan bought the story to trap Rush, even people who always excused Nan go quiet. It is satisfying, if a bit neat. The town that always whispered starts whispering about Nan instead.

Winning Blaire back in small moments

Rush does not win Blaire back with one speech. He shows up where she works, and she tells him to leave. He sends letters, and she leaves some unopened for days. When she finally reads one, it is not flowery. He lists what he hid and why, without asking her to excuse it. He says he will tell her anything she asks, even if it makes him look bad. Blaire tests him. She asks hard questions about Nan, about the boy, about money, about his mother. He answers, sometimes badly, but he does not dodge.

There is a scene in the parking lot after her shift that I kept thinking about. It is late, raining a little, the neon from the diner buzzing. Rush waits by his car instead of following her inside and making a scene at work. He hands her a bag with soup because he heard from her coworker she was sick. He does not try to kiss her. He just says he will be at a motel down the road if she wants to talk, and then he leaves. Blaire eats the soup in her car and cries, not because soup fixes lies, but because it is the first considerate thing that asks nothing from her.

Later, Rush helps fix her truck without making it a debt. He pays for the part, shows her the receipt, refuses extra thanks. He meets her father with her, and that meeting is awkward in a good way. Her father tries to act like a dad, Rush tries not to overstep, Blaire tries not to cry. Small things build. Rush remembers how she takes coffee. He waits while she finishes a double shift instead of complaining. He introduces her to the boy properly, letting her see him as a person rather than a secret, and Blaire is gentle and funny with him in a way that tells you she would be good at this complicated life if she chooses it.

The physical scenes heat up as they get closer again, and Glines writes them with a lot of detail. Rush and Blaire have strong chemistry, and the book leans into it. A few of those scenes felt well placed, after a hard talk when both of them need closeness. A few felt inserted to keep the pulse up when talk would have served better. Blaire even says at one point she needs words more than touch right now, and I wished the book listened to her more often in that stretch.

Woods and Della and a few other Rosemary Beach faces drift in and out. Woods offers Blaire a fair warning about loving someone with Rush's money and baggage. Della, quieter now, tells Blaire what it feels like to be on the outside of that rich group. Those side notes give Blaire information Rush cannot give her, and they help her decide with open eyes.

The reunion and what still nags at me

The last quarter moves fast. Blaire agrees to return to Rosemary Beach for a short visit, not to move back, just to see if she can stand to be in the same town as Nan without falling apart. Nan tries to provoke her at a party, loud and drunk, and this time Blaire does not run. She answers back calmly. Other people step in, which is new. Rush stands beside her without speaking for her. Woods backs them. Even Blaire's father shows up and acts, for once, like a father in public.

The final break with Nan is blunt. Rush tells Nan he loves Blaire, that he will not cover for Nan anymore, and that Nan needs real help he cannot give by writing checks. Nan slaps him, cries, leaves with a friend. It is not a redemption scene for Nan. She does not apologize in a way that counts. The book leaves her unwell and alone, which feels honest even if the writing around her has been broad.

Blaire and Rush end together. He asks her to live in the guest house again, but with clear terms and her own key and a job she chooses, not charity disguised as work. She says yes, slowly. The last pages are domestic and sweet. Morning coffee. The boy visiting with his bright laugh. Plans to save for school. Talk of dealing with Rush's family in therapy rather than silence. It is a happy ending, and after all the hurt, I wanted it for them.

Now the criticism I promised. This book repeats its central fight too many times. Blaire leaves, Rush begs, Blaire softens, Nan interferes, Blaire leaves again. After the third loop I started skimming the internal monologues because I knew the beats. Nan is written as almost cartoonishly evil, with no scene that lets us see why she is so broken beyond jealousy and neglect. I wanted one human moment for her that did not excuse her but explained her. And the balance between steam and talk is off. There are long, detailed love scenes while key talks about money, parenting, and boundaries get a page or two. For a story about trust, I wanted more talk.

Still, I finished it in two sittings and I cared. Blaire's grit holds the book up. Her waitress shifts, her budgeting, her refusal to be bought, those details make her feel real. Rush grows enough to earn a second chance, even if he gets there slower than I wanted. If you read Too Far and need to know what happens, this 2013 Simon and Schuster follow up, 257 pages, second in Rosemary Beach, gives you the reunion, the truth about Nan's pregnancy claims, and a couple finding a steadier way to love each other.