The Not-Outcast by Tijan
This book took me for a ride guys. Tijan nailed it. She took a character that's mind worked a little different and showed you how she shines. I am obsessed with Cheyenne. I mean I LOVED Cut and more people like him need to exist, but the real starts of this book are Cheyenne and her girls because they are everything.
This was a hockey romance but it was also a book that Brough mental illness to the forefront. I hate that term. metal illness. Because its not an illness, its a lifestyle for people that have these diagnosis. But I digress. This book Brought us a character with a light that you fall in with and a story that you won't ever forget.
Let me preface. I grew up in a family where understanding mental illness was a reality. Not in a bad way. But in a way that reading this book? I literally could see these scenes play out and know EXACTLY what the character was going through or was going to need from her support system.
Throw Cut into the mix and I was hooked. We are ALSO a Hockey family and I am ABSOLUTELY An Alice. Once you read it, you'll get it.
Cutler Ryder was everything I wasn't.
He was the hockey star. I was an outcast.
He was best friends with my stepbrother, that same stepbrother who hated me.
His two parents loved him. My mom was a junkie. My dad barely knew me.
Years passed.
I got my life together.
Cut went onto NHL stardom.
Then there was a text.
I was drinking.
There was a party.
Cut was there...
I loved Cutler Ryder since the first moment I saw him.
The only problem? He never knew I existed.