THE BOOKS DESK · REVIEW

Closer Together

4 stars · Childhood best friends reconnect after twenty-five years in a warm, spicy grown-up romance full of books, banter and mountain rescue.

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Apparently all a man needs to do is work in a library, volunteer for mountain rescue, and still have a soft spot for the girl he knew twenty-five years ago, and suddenly I’m listening.

Closer Together by Dani Elias follows Rob and Olivia, childhood best friends who haven’t seen each other in roughly twenty-five years. When Olivia returns to Fellside, they reconnect—and it doesn’t take very long for both of them to realize that whatever existed between them when they were younger might not have disappeared quite as completely as they thought.

And Rob?

A librarian. Mountain rescue volunteer. Funny. Protective. Adventurous. Completely smitten.

Dani Elias knew what she was doing.

I really enjoyed the natural comfort between Rob and Olivia. There’s an ease to their banter that makes their history believable, and I loved the little pieces of their childhood friendship woven into who they are as adults. They tease each other, they laugh together, and their chemistry is obvious almost immediately.

And once they stop pretending otherwise?

Things get SPICY.

There is a scene involving reading a spicy romance aloud together that went exactly where I hoped it would go.

Thank you for your service.

Where I struggled a little was the pacing of the romance. Considering these two have been separated for twenty-five years, I wanted more yearning. More tension. More of that delicious wait… am I actually falling for my childhood best friend? panic.

Instead, they reconnect and things move pretty quickly.

YOU HAD TWENTY-FIVE YEARS OF PINING AVAILABLE TO YOU.

MAKE ME SUFFER.

What gave the story more depth for me was Olivia’s relationship with her family and the way Rob reacts to seeing how she’s treated. Olivia has spent years being underestimated, and while Rob wants to protect her, he eventually crosses a boundary trying to do it.

I really appreciated that the book doesn’t excuse him simply because his intentions were good.

Olivia gets angry.

Rob realizes he screwed up.

And Olivia gets to stand up for herself.

That mattered to me because being protective is only romantic when you’re still respecting the person you’re trying to protect.

Then the mountain rescue storyline said, “Oh, you wanted emotional stakes?”

And suddenly we HAVE THEM.

The accident and hospital scenes were probably where the romance finally clicked emotionally for me. It forces both of them to confront what this relationship actually means beyond attraction, nostalgia and really good chemistry.

I also loved that the ending doesn’t use trauma as an excuse to immediately rush them toward marriage and happily-ever-after perfection. They deliberately slow down. They talk about their previous relationships, their fears, their mistakes and what building something real together actually looks like.

That’s the grown-up romance I wanted from these two.

Closer Together is sweet, spicy, funny and comforting, with childhood friends reconnecting as adults, small-town charm, family complications, books, mountain rescue and a hero who can apparently save someone from a cliff but cannot be trusted around chocolate cake.

I just wanted a little more yearning before they got there.

4 stars on the AURA scale.

I received an advance copy of Closer Together. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

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