The premise for this story is sweet - a redeemed bully returns to his hometown wealthy wanting to make a difference for his community, and to make up for the way he treated his secret high school crush. The implementation, however, could have used some work as it was a tad contrived as the characters’ reactions and dialogue often jumped with missing build-up making it seem overly idealistic, sometimes presumptuous and unbelievable at points. A professional editor would likely have eliminated some of the mis-spellings and typos and smoothened out the dialogue. Nevertheless, I appreciate the intent to cover the subjects of abuse, therapy, atoning for past wrongs and the overall sweet flavour of small town romance that the author tried to infuse the story with overall. The story and writing certainly improve as the book progresses. The author shows good potential as this seems to be a good effort for one of their first novels - certainly better than I could do - and ai can see that they perhaps tried to put a lot into the book with such a heavy topic which is hard to cover and fully relate what a person would experience were they to experience this very real trauma and recovery. I feel like the serious nature of the emotions required more self-introspection and could have been better portrayed in first-person POV.