💜 Max Monroe 🌺 WHEN I SHOULD'VE STAYED 🌞 #RedBridge2 🍒

 

WHEN I SHOULD'VE STAYED
Max Monroe

• 1 July 2025
• can be read as a standalone
• Red Bridge Book #2

★★★★
4 Stars

Josie: Before The Moment

There are ghosts at every corner. In the stolen kisses while I waitressed at the diner, in the town festivals in the square, in the many jokes about Betty Bagley and her pie at the Fall Farmer's Market, and in countless nights spent watching Clay make drinks with that handsome smile of his plastered on his face while I sat on a stool at the bar.

It should all feel familiar and comforting, and yet, it makes it hard for the person I am now to breathe at all.

I wish I'd been stronger. I wish I'd been wiser. I wish I didn't have to do this.

I wish.

Tonight will be a defining moment for the rest of my life.

I have to end it now...

...before it ends me.

Clay: After The Moment

When Josie and I said, 'I do', I thought it'd be us against the world forever. But I wasn't expecting the world to be so against us.

I know I should've stayed that night, and I should have gone back a heck of a lot sooner.

Because I don't know how to be here. I don't know how to be anywhere.

Truth is, I don't know how to be without Josie at all.

She might think we're done, but I'm going to spend the rest of my life making sure we're not.

Josie + Clay

We met them both in Norah and Ben's book. And now they'll tell us their story.
We go back and forth between then and now and it all started so sweet and adorable - but it's not so sweet and adorable now.

Something or several things must've happened in between our meet cute in Clay's bar and the way Josie hates him now - as already seen in the first book.

What happened? And what can we do to get to our second happily ever after?

READ THE BOOK TO FIND OUT!

That was adorable.

I really loved reading this. But I also hated it. 

First I'm not a fan of going back in time in my books. I want to read the NOW!

And we do that here a lot - like 80% of the book takes us back in time and half of that is kind of exactly the same what we just read in Norah and Ben's book. Plus the different times were way too confusing for me. We get days and months as a headline but not years and it took me forever to figure out where each chapter was taking me. Plus, having just read the first book for the 2nd time right before starting this one, I was kinda up to date with their non-relationship. I wanted to see how they got back together. I didn't want to see the past! But we only get like 5% of the book with them back together. That wasn't enough for me. Compared to the first book in the series this second one was disappointing in many ways.

I just wished for more. Not too much of the past and so much more of the present. And also ... I hated that they wasted so many years for nothing! Jeez Josie. Why?

But it's what I got and I still loved the story. Especially since I got to see a lot of Summer. And we did get great moments and I cried and it was sweet and funny and heartbreaking. 
I will never not read a Max Monroe book! Even if they didn't really get me with this one.

Now I really need to read Breezy and Sheep farmer Tad's book!

WHEN I SHOULD'VE STAYED was a sweet + funny + adorable + heartbreaking small-town second-chance romance! Which could've been avoided if she had just stayed. But still - great love story! Run to your nearest book dealer for your own Clay - this one is so mine!

↓ Links to the Books & Author ↓

 

Book #1

 

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OG Billionaire Collection #3

 

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Single Dad Standalones Book #1

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#Book 2

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About five years ago, a dynamic duo of romance authors teamed up under the pseudonym Max Monroe, and, well, the rest is history...

Max Monroe is the New York Times and USA Today Bestselling Author of more than thirty contemporary romance titles. Favorite writing partners and long time friends, Max and Monroe strive to live and write all the fun, sexy swoon so often missing from their Facebook newsfeed. Sarcastic by nature, their two writing souls feel like they’ve found their other half. This is their most favorite adventure thus far.