Only Once: A Single Parent- Hollywood RomancePaperback

Ahh Ryan. I didn’t know if I wanted to punch him or jump him! Bexley and Ryan were college sweethearts, but poor timing, miscommunications and lack of communicating, plus insecurity pulled them apart. Fast forward years down the road, Ryan is a super star actor and an even bigger tool. Bexley is a divorced single mom struggling to make ends meet at a terrible job. Which Ryan happens to show up at. Ryan is horrible to her at the beginning, just a horrible person in general. Bex is clearly struggling, has a life, and Ryan is jealous. But once Ryan and Bex finally sort through their issues, it’s pretty clear they’re soulmates. There are definitely things they have to work through, Ryan has some big life decisions he needs to decide on, but these two are meant to be together.

I loved this book. I like characters that have to go grow up a bit, it makes the story so much more emotional, and Ryan definitely needed to grow up. Bex too, in different ways.

This book deserves all the stars, I love Ashley’s books!

Only Once brings a celebrity romance, a sports romance and a second chance romance all together into one book that will touch your heart.

I was completely invested in this story. Bexley was every mom...putting her kids first and doing everything she could to make sure they had what they needed. She was one of the realist characters I have read. She wasn’t perfect but her love for her kids, friends and Ryan was.

Ryan was a tough one at times....he confused and intrigued me until I started to love him. I like complex characters like that...how one event from 10years ago really shaped the man he became and what it took for him to realize he hadn’t ever really moved on from Bexley. He grew and changed in the best way.

I’m a sucker for cute kids in books. Cole and Bella just made this book even sweeter and cuter.

This story is sexy, all the feels and the perfect amount of angst. It’s beautifully written, and an emotional journey as Bex and Ryan face so many trials and tribulations on their way to their long awaited and earned. HEA.

... that brought me to my knees in anguish for the two people who experienced that love, and lost it.

I should make this a short one-line review: I absolutely LOVED-LOVED-LOVED this second chance sports/movie star angsty romance and reckon it’s one of my top reads for 2021. I would absolutely recommend it to all and sundry, so go and read it now!!!

I honestly don’t know how she does it, but Author Ashley Munoz packed a lot of feels into this book that I seemed to get through rather quickly, but with it being at almost 400 pages apparently, I can’t say that it’s a short read! What I can tell you is that once again, I was a slave to her words, consuming it in one sitting by staying up until the early hours of the morning to get it finished – the first time.

In the prologue we met Bexley as the unwanted child of a man who visited her mother occasionally and refused to acknowledge her very existence as his daughter. Her mother compared her to ice-cream flavours; she was not a flavour that her father liked, and she would learn that she would not be everyone’s first choice of flavour. At nine, she decided she “didn’t want to be someone’s second or third—or last— choice.”

This set the tone for her future choices, her future heartbreak, and the heartbreak of others. Ms Munoz wrote a book that contained all the feels. All. The. Feels. 😭😭😭

I loved Bexley. While she did carry the weight of never-ending heartbreak, disappointment and loss heavily around her neck, her absolute love for her children shone like an aura around her character. She was a ‘real’ person, a mother who died of embarrassment at the behaviour of her little cretins, but would do anything in the world to love, feed and clothe them. Especially when her cheating ex neglected to send his share of the kids’ support money through, or was too busy with his new family to carry out fatherly duties.

Ryan, our gorgeously buff and tattooed movie star hero carried anger. So much anger. It fairly vibrated from him at times and I wondered what an earth Bexley could have done to him to deserve the diatribe that she got. Her early promises to herself, and hearing their history in her POV certainly differed from his, and he came across as the young and selfish 20-year-old that he was at the time. Hearing from these two characters is exactly why I love the dual POV style of writing. We know that people see the same situation through different lenses of previous life’s experiences, and for them, that is exactly what happened.

All this sounds black and white, but it wasn’t. Ms Munoz put into writing the mess and feelings that are human emotions. They swirled around the story in a whirlwind that whipped even the present love and reconnection between them with so much muddy childish insecurity that when other’s stirred in some trouble, it was hard to move past the existing hurt and distrust.

I have a special shout out for the unconditional love that Gary and Gloria, Ryan’s parents, had for Bexley and her kids. It’s as if Ms Munoz wrote my in-laws into her book, and they’ve been the best ever in-laws and grandparents I could ever have wished for me and my children.

I just loved everything about this book. It’s worth more than 5 Stars •💖•

This very well written story was everything anyone who reads this genre could want. The romance was sweet and loving with a strong love between the two main characters (but endured numerous bumps and off-ramps in the road that had to be traveled which of course brought interest to the story). Both main characters were likable, and as with the side characters, were so real to life. The story flowed well making it hard to put down, and ended with a satisfying and beautiful HEA. All-in-all, a very enjoyable story.