From Here to You – Jamie McGuire

Genre: Romance
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Pages:
Release Date: August 21, 2018

As Darby Dixon sits in a tiny Texas church bathroom on her wedding day holding a positive pregnancy test, she realizes that of all the bad decisions she’s made in her life, marrying her abusive fiancé would be the worst. She’s never been able to stand up for herself, but she’ll sure as hell stand up for her baby. With just the cash she has on hand, she runs to get a bus ticket to the farthest place she can afford. Between her sheer grit and pageant-queen smile, she lands a job as a front desk clerk at the Colorado Springs Hotel. It’s not a glamorous life, but she and her baby are all that matters.

A former Marine, Scott “Trex” Trexler has worked in the most dangerous, corrupt, war-torn places on earth. Now he finally has a chance to return to the last place he’d felt at peace–Colorado Springs, Colorado, to take a new job with the Cheyenne Mountain Complex, a top-secret military installation buried deep within the granite.

The moment Trex walks into the inn, Darby knows he’s dangerous. There’s no way she wants to get involved with another man who seems to be keeping way too many secrets. As charming and devastatingly gorgeous as Trex is, he clearly isn’t telling her everything. But as wildfires rage on the mountain and Darby’s ex-fiancé shows he isn’t so willing to let her go, both she and Trex are soon to find out that what you don’t know absolutely can hurt you.

Everything about From Here to You is just annoying. The characters, plot, and romance are all cringe and eye roll worthy.

From Here to You is a lesson on how not to fall into clichés and tropes. Instalove and a useless main character are at the top of the list.

Darby and Trex have little to no chemistry. This is due mostly to the fact that McGuire focuses for large parts of the novel on all the side characters rather than developing Darby and Trex as a romantic couple. By the end of the novel, I knew more about all the peripheral characters than Darby and Trex combined.

Darby is the clichéd beautiful woman that men fall over themselves trying to protect. She has no agency and no personality. She’s a bland cardboard cut out of a typical new adult protagonist that brings down the genre.

Trex starts out as a super romantic man with a specific vision of his future that works in theory. Upon execution however, Trex comes off as creepy, unreliable, and annoying. How many times does the same mistake need to be made before a lesson is learned?

My final note about this novel is one that is very personal, so you may take this with a grain of salt. From Here to You is surprisingly religious. There are large passages of religion being discussed and debated that are out of place and a waste of the word count.

Perhaps I’ve put grown out of Jamie McGuire since I haven’t really enjoyed her novels lately or maybe nothing will ever compare to Beautiful Disaster. Either way, this will be my last Jamie McGuire novel.

Have you read From Here to You? What did you think?