Book Summary: 

It was only ever meant to be one night.

University professor Ethan Carter has returned to Sydney to rebuild his life and reconnect with his family. What he doesn’t expect is to connect with a beautiful stranger. Or for her to turn up as his student.

Ethan – What are the chances? The first woman who has made me feel anything at all in two years, and she’s totally off limits.

Sadie – The one rule I’ve lived my life by is not to turn out like my mother. Why did he have to flip that on its head?

Is Ethan truly ready for the new life he wants, or will his grief and regret stop him from opening up to the one person who might heal him? And will Sadie finally learn that trusting someone doesn’t always end badly?

My Review:

Five books later, and we have finally come to the end of the road with the Carter family (either by blood, by marriage, or by choice). We have been spectators to the whirlwind romances of Nick and Lulu, Josh and Greer, Ben and Rosanna, and Will and Freyja. We have seen love, witnessed loss, and grown to cherish this family as if we were a part of it. Although Carrie promises that we are not done with the lot just yet, I will miss the tight-knit brotherhood created by the Carter men and the sanctuary the Sailing Club has provided through each story. In “The Problem with Falling in Love,” we wrap up with the final Carter brother, the one who thought he had his happily ever after with the only woman he ever loved until she was suddenly and tragically taken away from him far too soon.

Ethan hadn’t even been in town long enough to unpack his boxes when he somehow managed to blow up his life. Having returned from Europe after several years following the unexpected death of the love of his life, his wonderful wife Jess, Ethan’s only goals were to make amends with his family and excel in his new position at the university. It wasn’t to meet a gorgeous bartender, take her home to blow off some steam, and then find out a week later that the scorching hot memories he can’t get out of his mind just so happen to belong to a PhD student in his program. And because misery loves company, the head of the department has decided he should be Sadie’s supervisor.

Sadie has one rule that she follows: Mr. Solo Man was supposed to stay in the past as a one-night stand she would never see again. He was NOT supposed to be the new professor in her program, and he definitely wasn’t supposed to look as delicious as he did the night they hooked up. In the name of self-preservation, she needs what happened between them to stay in the past. The Montgomery name doesn’t have the best reputation, and she refuses to let the mistakes of her parents’ past ruin her future. She just needs to get Ethan on board with keeping their little rendezvous a secret and then keep her distance. The problem is the head of the department, Jennifer, has other plans, insisting that Ethan becomes her supervisor, working as his classroom assistant, exchanging numbers, essentially putting her right back in his path. Things go from bad to worse when, despite her objections, she is now going to be in close quarters with him for six weeks in Egypt! How can a dream come true and a nightmare both exist in the same moment?

Unlike its predecessors, “The Problem with Falling in Love” had a different feel/approach. For one, it paid homage to the original, where the focus was more on Sadie than it was on Ethan (just like it was more on Lulu than Nick). The other was that it was definitely a love letter to Egypt, as Carrie points out in her dedication. This means the country itself became a character, a focal point in the story versus a background setting to the protagonists.

Normally, when I read one of Carrie’s books, I can’t stop swooning over the male protagonist. In “The Problem with Falling in Love,” all eyes were on Sadie. She was strong, independent, brilliant, kind-hearted, witty, and just everything you would want to see from a female protagonist. She held her own in any situation but had such a fragile heart shaped by the emotionally challenging experiences of her past. Like everyone else in the story, you found yourself gravitating towards her, taking her side, wanting to be Team Sadie in every instance where her disposition felt threatened. Having Riley as the antagonist in the story was the perfect balance. She was everything Sadie wasn’t, including the lack of any type of common sense and humility – two traits that flowed in abundance with Sadie. She did the same thing with Ethan and Martin, creating an appreciation and admiration for one character by displaying the polar opposite in qualities via another. The good/evil, light/dark contrasts propelled the character development, allowing you to not only accept and admire the characters for who they were but have their qualities amplified by comparison.

Speaking of Riley, she is the embodiment of privilege. While each reader may have a different reaction to her, I, for one, wanted to choke her! Like Ethan and Sadie, I kept asking the question, “Why is she here? Couldn’t daddy buy her way into another program?” As someone who prefers not to judge anyone – to each their own – Carrie wrote Riley perfectly enough to irk my nonjudgmental nerves! Carrie didn’t set you up to unjustifiably loathe these characters; she demonstrated the pettiness of Professor Martin Collins, the despicableness of Sadie’s father, Professor Derek Montgomery, and again – all that was Riley, which was echoed by the secondary characters in the book.

Switching focus to Egypt’s role in the book, I have read stories in the past where the author focused too heavily on the background setting, pulling away from the story and the characters. Carrie found a working balance by making Egypt a conduit for Ethan and Sadie’s emotions. In some forced proximity stories, you can place the characters in any situation and would potentially see the same results because it is the close quarters that sets the stage. In “The Problem with Falling in Love,” it was Egypt itself and the characteristics it pulled out in each character that brought them closer together. Forced proximity at a conference in Australia, London, or New York would not have had the same results. Sadie saw Ethan thrive in his element, a side of him she would never have seen at home, and Ethan saw a passion, a kindred spirit uncorked in Sadie that again, he would have never seen at the University. Egypt was an active facilitator in their connection – constantly holding back the curtain to anything they would have tried to hide in any other setting. Anytime Egypt was described, it was through the characters, how they saw it, what they felt, how it impacted them. Remove the characters, and the descriptions of Egypt would fall apart – that is where Carrie excelled where others failed. She intertwined the settings and characters perfectly, making it an extension of them instead of an addition to the story.

The only thing that bothered me, and it doesn’t take away from the story, is what happened with some of the antagonists of the story. I think we didn’t receive a wrap-up on Derek, Rebecca, or Martin because they were who they were and would never change. Derek was flirting with Riley, which shows he is still the same slime he has always been. Rebecca, Sadie’s mother, had a hissy fit and leaves her parents, which shows she will always be in the victim role and Liam’s enabler. Jennifer had already stated earlier what she needed from Martin in order to get rid of him, so his slip-up was more than likely that green light on her plan to force him into resignation. Unfortunately, all of this is an assumption, so confirmation of what happened would have been appreciated, but again, it wasn’t really necessary for the story as a whole.

I will definitely say Carrie did not waste any time when it came to the spice factor of this book. I remember reading and thinking, “Well, dang – that was fast!” That is always the hilarious conundrum of a one-night stand that turns into more; it isn’t getting the two characters to initially hook up, it is getting the stars to align perfectly to make it happen again – especially when both are adamant (mentally) to make sure there isn’t a repeat performance but can’t control their physical response to one another. After that initial connection, Carrie did keep the intimate moments more sporadic in this story than she had in the past, transitioning out of the immediate hot and heavy of a one-night stand to a slow burn.

Again, in many of Carrie’s stories, there are outside factors, personality differences, or relationship connections the protagonists must navigate in order to be together. In this book, it was the demons of the past that acted as gatekeepers. Sadie was determined not to become her mother or be collateral damage, as her father had designated her. Each decision she made, each action she took – it was in response to her past, not her present. As she said, no one else was going to protect the little girl inside of her, so it was up to adult Sadie to put her first. We saw the detriment when Derek came to the dig site and with her mother during Christmas, the moments where she was made to feel small, insignificant, and/or responsible for the fallout that others were suffering. With Ethan, she let down her guard initially because her heart was behind the wheel, telling her mind, her logic to take a backseat for once and not overanalyze everything, only to be burned when they were in Bangalay. This is when her self-preservation collided with Ethan’s. Ethan, who could not fathom replacing his late wife Jess. Ethan, who already felt the guilt and humility of abandoning his family instead of letting them help him. He was constantly at war with his mind and heart, drowning in the pain of the past and refusing to allow solace, thereby preventing himself from entertaining the possibility of future happiness.

Stepping into this story after having read “The Nature of Falling in Love,” you are not surprised by the intensity of the grief that Ethan is experiencing. In that book, we learned what happened, we saw the rift in the family, we witnessed Ethan vanish, isolating himself with his sorrow and cutting off those connected in any way to his late wife. In “The Problem with Falling in Love,” we are two years (or so) into the future where he has decided to repair, amend, and reclaim some resemblance of his life. The problem is, he hasn’t fully healed. What I found most interesting is that it isn’t for the reasons we were initially led to believe. We know what he said to Will, we saw the evolution of his relationship with Jess through the first three books. To learn the true source of his guilt, I wouldn’t have guessed it. It wasn’t all about the life he wasn’t allowed to have because he lost her so suddenly, the children they would never have, the family he lost. It was about the guilt that he didn’t want the HEA that Jess saw, how they weren’t aligned in the idea of expanding their family, and how guilty he felt for keeping her from the life she always wanted to have. Yes, this is everything learned in hindsight, and if she had lived, he would have given her everything she wanted because he loved her, but at what secret cost to the foundation of their relationship? Would he have resented her if he had to give up his digs to be a more present parent? Would she have been on board with being in Egypt for several months to support his career? The what-ifs are the annoying gnats that we see plaguing Ethan throughout the story. He wasn’t ready to move on and let her go because he didn’t think he deserved to for what he believed he took from her. I am happy that Sadie pointed out that by not speaking her name, allowing her to be in the room, sharing her with others – he was erasing her instead of honoring her. That was a truly profound moment in the story that I hope others who may be grieving the loss of a loved one can take to heart.

I am going to miss this crazy, rowdy group! “The Problem with Falling in Love” may be the last of this series, but it is only the beginning of the world Carrie is intent on building. I don’t know where we are going next, but trust me, I am already buckled in, ready for the ride!