Gaining Miles: A Miles Family Novella (The Miles Family Book 5)
Release Date 4/5/2019
Purchase or read for free with Kindle Unlimited here.
Bookish Stacy Rating *****
Oh my goodness! What can I say about this book besides it was everything?
From the moment we met Ben and Shannon in Broken Miles, I just knew these two would be absolute perfection together. I've thoroughly enjoyed watching them interact and inch closer together in the previous books of this series. Watching it all culminate in this final Miles family book was just a joy, and Claire Kingsley went far above my expectations with their story.
Ben is the groundskeeper who has worked for the Miles family at their vineyard for 26 years and has probably been in love with Shannon for almost that long. He is just the swooniest! He spent more time parenting the children than their own father did. I mean, the man waited for decades, never knowing if or when he would get what he really wanted. He was just content to stay in the background and love on this family, that he considered his own, with everything he had.
"Shannon had been the name my heart had whispered for a long time."
Shannon is the matriarch of the family that she has put first for her entire life, barely stopping to remember that she is also just a woman. As a woman with grown children, I was so very happy to see her find her way back to herself in this book.
"I'd lost so much of myself over the years. In pouring everything I had into my family and our business, I hadn't saved much time for me."
So, now that their clocks are finally in sync, this is the story of them realizing that they both deserve so much more than what they've been given. I loved every bit of this story. Even though it is a novella, it ties up everything and ends this series just beautifully. The author did a wonderful job in making sure this story had just the right amount of sweet and heat (and many laughs, courtesy of Cooper) and left me with happy tears and a big swoony smile on my face. The epilogue had me over the moon and the bonus epilogue has me hopeful that we will see more of this family in her next series, The Bailey Brothers (which I have grabby hands for,) where Grace's story will be told. I couldn't love this family or this ending more!
"After everything we'd been through, we had each other. We had this. And that meant we had it all."
This book really needs to be read after the previous books in the series, which are best read in order. While each book is a complete story about a different couple, there is an ongoing backstory.
You can purchase (or read for free with Kindle Unlimited) the complete Miles Family series here.
