Bear With Me Now, is a cute read. While half the story takes place in New York City, the other half takes place in the wilderness and I highly enjoyed all of Darcy’s wilderness facts! However, for being a light romance, this has some fairly heavy topics such as mental health, death, and addicts. Shepard portrayed these topics well, which certainly made the characters more relatable.
BUTTTT….
As likable as both characters are, I never felt any chemistry and their relationship didn’t have an organic feel to it. Something about the way it all meshes together didn’t work for me. I can’t put my finger on, but I loved all the individual parts of the story, just didn’t love the way it all came together.
I would have liked this book more if it was 100 pages shorter. It was repetitive, especially with Darcy’s misconception that Teagan wasn’t an alcoholic. Teagon tells her multiple times that he wasn’t an alcoholic especially when he doesn’t seem to display any of the normal behaviors, and she is extremely dismissive of him. I couldn’t get behind the ‘miscommunication’ and found it increasingly frustrating and I don’t think constantly reminding a recovering alcoholic that they’re a recovering alcoholic is the best choice, but I don’t have experience with that so maybe it is?
If you’re looking for a cute wilderness read with lots of animal references, give this with some heavier topics give this debut a shot.
Bear With Me Now is out now. Huge thank you to Berkley Books for my advanced copy in exchange for my honest opinion. If you liked this review please let me know either by commenting below or by visiting my instagram @speakingof.books.
