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Not only is “My Brother’s Forbidden Friend” the most apt example of the phrase “saving the best for last,” but it was also a beautifully bittersweet farewell to the Greene family that I wasn’t expecting.
If you’ve followed the Greene family since the beginning, I’m sure you’ve been just as intrigued by the tension between Cam and Chevelle as I have, but nothing could have prepared me for the number of tears I would shed. The laughter we all expected from the Greene family was as fantastic as ever, but as Chevelle’s love story played out, there were several times I had to wipe tears in order to be able to see the words on the page. I wasn’t ready for the emotional Greene family tragedy to completely and utterly consume my thoughts and emotions and transform them into a very real sense of healing.
Chevelle had a whole different perspective from her siblings on the loss of their mother. She held a lot of her feelings close to her chest, and she had a way of keeping people at a bit of a distance. Why would you want to love someone only to lose them? She didn’t let it completely harden her though, and I think along with her strength, that’s also attributed to the love the Greene family has for one another.
Cam has been a part of the Greene clan for years. People on the outside saw someone who grew up with everything, but the truth was that he found everything a child needs within his best friend’s family. He may have never seemed like the type to settle down, but the moment he saw the girl in the purple dress, his future was written in the stars. He was the perfect blend of protective alpha and swoony.
The tension between Cam and Chevelle could be felt the first time they appeared on the pages together, and as the other Greene siblings fell in love, the two of them were dangled in front of us like a sexual tension infused carrot on a string of panty melting overprotective words and sassy retorts. From the moment they met, they were inevitable under all the perceived hate of one another as two halves of a soul waiting to become whole.
I loved that Cam and Chevelle saw much more in one another than in each other. She saw him for who he was on the inside and not as the boy who had everything handed to him, and he saw the pain and guilt that had embedded itself inside her on that winter day. I giggled at Cam’s overprotectiveness, and when Chevelle let her emotions slip through, I had to wipe away tears in order to see the words before me and antics that made me laugh out loud. Everything I love about the Greene family, but this was more than that. It was a beautifully woven story of love, and the last piece the Greene family siblings needed to allow them to finally feel a sense of peace that was only ever going to happen with Chevelle.
I’m not sure I’ve ever felt so overwhelmed by the final book in a series. This duo has a way of infusing the families they create into your hearts, and you undeniably become a part of them. The laughs they’ve brought me when all I wanted to do was cry, and the tears I’ve shed by finding a sense of healing alongside the fictional characters are something that will remain long after this goodbye.
My Brother’s Forbidden Friend is without question the essence of saving the best for last. An enthralling combination of an intoxicating tension-filled slow-burn, a swoony hero, a sassy heroine, teeming with laugh-out-loud antics, giggle-inducing banter, from the laughter to the tears, each character’s emotions bleeds through the pages, nursing home shenanigans, all set inside a fictional town in a state I’ve never visited, but all the same, it’s become a part of me, as the Greene family has offered me a sense of home and love that my heart had been missing.
