Here Without You (Between the Lines, #4)

by Tammara Webber

[Jo]

Originally posted on Once Upon a Bookcase.

Obviously, after how much I loved the first three books in the Between the Lines series, I was going to read Here Without You, the fourth and final book. And unsurprisingly, it was absolutely beautiful!

Reid and Dori are together, and finally publicly. People are recognising Dori and asking questions, which is hard to deal with, especially now that she's at college and isn't seeing Reid all that often. With the distance between them, doubts begin to creep in for Dori. Reid is having some trouble of his own; Brooke has found their son she gave up for adoption, and he doesn't have the life she believed he would. So Brooke is trying to get him back, and Reid has to make the biggest decision of his life.

Here Without you is SO BEAUTIFUL. It's completely heartbreaking, but in a good way. Brooke really steps up. We know her as being selfish and manipulating circumstances to get what she wants, but when it comes to River, the son she had with Reid, that all turns around. Yes, she wants her son back, but purely because she believes she will give him the love and the life he needs; not just because of her fame and wealth, but because she has River's best interests at heart. He's had such a hard beginning, and she's determined that the rest of his childhood will be happy.

Reid is a changed man because of Dori. At his core, he's still Reid, the guy I always saw there underneath the all the bad behaviour and flirtation. Now he has Dori, the rest falls away; he doesn't need to be bad or flirt like there's no tomorrow. He has Dori, and she's all he sees, all he needs. She literally brings the best out of him.

Although there's still romance, the romance is almost secondary to storyline surrounding River. The two plots run alongside each other, both feeding the other. Reid and Dori are still really sweet together, but they're on a rocky road. Dori is still suffering from her lack of faith after her sister's accident, and there's a part of her that believes Reid will end up leaving too. It's hard for her, because she feels like she should be careful and prepare for it to happen, and yet when she's with Reid, she can't imagine life without him.

The series gets hotter with each book, without being very graphic. Webber is a seriously skilled author, and doesn't need to head in an erotic direction to bring the sexy. I have to say Webber is my favourite NA author, simply for not shoving sex in our faces just because she's writing for a slightly older audience, with older characters. There's a lot to be said for sexual tension; when done right, it can be sexier than reading about who put what where. Webber writes classy NA.

In the UK, Webber's Easy was released before any of the books in the Between the Lines series, so I read it first. Maybe it's because Here Without You was written afterwards, or simply the direction the series was heading in, but this book feels similiar to Easy at it's core. The main focus of the previous books in the series is romance. Although the others touch on serious issues - Graham with Cara, Brook giving up her child - it's the serious issue, of Brooke getting back her son, that is the main focus of Here Without You.

Here Without You is an amazing conclusion to a brilliant series! Webber is such a fantastic writer, and she proves this again and again with each book published. There's nothing she can write that I won't read.

Thank you to Penguin for the review copy.