Review: Meet Me in Tahiti

Meet Me in Tahiti by Georgia Toffolo
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

3.5 stars 

I received this book for free, this does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review 

But Finn hadn't needed to be told: he'd always known Zoe was off-limits. 

Meet Me in Tahiti is the third book in the Meet Me series about four childhood friends that experienced a traumatic car accident in their senior year that has left lasting marks on each one in different ways into their adulthood. Zoe was the rich girl fairy princess that her parents and everyone in town coddled, this only increased when she became a paraplegic after the accident. Finn was the boy who had to drop out of school to work three jobs to help his ailing mother, but for a summer where they both worked at a restaurant together, Finn and Zoe recognized and were drawn to something in the other. For two years they danced around each other until after Zoe's accident has Finn finally making a move, only to be rejected harshly by a Zoe who was hurt and in pain about her new circumstances. Now, when they meet twelve years later, they're still drawn to each other but that old pain is still there too. 

He wanted time with her. 

This had a sweet and lightness to it, with a first half that had Finn just absolutely sick for Zoe that captured my heart. I'm serious, when Zoe shows up at his hotel resort, oh yes, kid from the wrong side of the tracks Finn does good and is now an owner of six hotel resorts, he's supposed to fly out the next day. He keeps making up excuses, and it will have you almost feeling sorry for the guy because of how helpless he is over her. We get some reminiscing flashbacks to Zoe and Finn during that summer together and then the two years and ultimate breaking point of when Zoe was harsh with him. The angst is all about Finn during his younger years staying away because he didn't feel good enough for Zoe and how that has carried over to him as an adult. Finn staying at the resort with Zoe though, is all about him wanting to show her that he's good enough for her now, so he's pretty much all-in from the beginning. Zoe for her part, felt too young and unexciting for the two years older Finn when they younger and now as an adult, still won't believe that he could ever like her like that. So, we have two people who are both wanting to get together, Zoe finds adult Finn even more attractive and definitely wants to start something with him, so why is this book three hundred pages? Well, we do get that sweet yearning and tension in the first half but the second half drags out with multiple rinse and repeat moments of stop, go, and misunderstanding. 

She laughed. “Are you only interested in one thing?” There was the smile, the glow, the heat, that promise. 

“Depends how you classify one thing.” 

One thing. The one thing was her. 

When they meet back-up as adults, Zoe is twenty-eight and Finn thirty, they do have some younger feel to them, especially Zoe with her “giggling” and covering her face whenever she's flustered, if the giggling hadn't been repeated so many times, it wouldn't have tripped me up as much, because these two did have a sense of reverting to their when-we-met younger selves that, mostly, worked tone. They share some kisses in the second half but the door is firmly closed in this one, they're headed to bed and then Zoe's waking up in the morning with a quick mention that they did sleep together. 

And it was at that precise moment that Zoe fell in love. 

I really enjoyed how Zoe's disability wasn't an element of the story but rather a part of her character, she's a travel writer and while she obviously acknowledges, lives, deals with other people's missteps, and thinks about accessibility, it wasn't forced but simply the fabric of her life. Having Finn growing up with a mother who taught him a lot in this regard and then him, obviously, thinking about Zoe when working to design the resort in Tahiti, really laid down a strong foundation building block in their relationship. All the secondary characters played their parts and helped to fill out the world and add to different dynamics of our two main characters. There's not a lot of the series connection friends in this but they share phone calls for some appearances. As the vast majority of the story takes place at the island resort, you'll also get some great tropical setting with descriptions of food, flowers, and some boat rides. I lost my heart to Finn and how much he just wanted to be around Zoe in the first half but there were a bit too many stop and repeat moments in the second that wore me out some. There's a grand gestures ending, covert by Finn and overt by Zoe, that will make you smile and if you're looking for an island setting and a sweet, trembling but trying couple, you'll want to pick this one up.

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