It has been a long anticipated read given my thorough enjoyment of Liz Tomforde’s Windy City series, and finally I have got my hands on Rio’s book, Rewind it Back! With everything I feel about this series and Rio from Mile High, The Right Move, Caught Up, and Play Along, I knew this one was going to be a good one and I was proven right.

Hallie: When I was eleven, my family moved next door to his. When I was thirteen, he was my first crush. When I was sixteen, we fell for each other. And when I was nineteen, we broke each other’s hearts. Six years later, I’ve landed an internship with a big-name interior designer in a new city. Unfortunately, that city just so happens to be the one he plays hockey for. I thought Chicago was big enough to avoid him, until I get the surprise of a lifetime and unknowingly move in right next door. Even worse? The renovation project I’m assigned to in hopes of turning that internship into my full-time dream job… It’s his house. But how am I supposed to update his bachelor pad into a family home when we can’t even stand to be in the same room?I may have loved Rio DeLuca once, but I’m not that same girl anymore.

Rio: I never thought I’d be the only single one left in my friend group. But after years of trying to find love, I’ve concluded it may not exist for me anymore. That is, until I accidentally hire Hallie Hart to renovate my house and our jaded history has me rewinding memories I’ve kept secret for years. You see, there’s something that my friends don’t know. That connection I’ve been looking for since I moved to Chicago, that one person some search their entire lives to find… I had already found her when I was twelve years old. And now the only girl I’ve ever loved is moving into the house next door. Again.

This review will contain spoilers for this novel and the Windy City series as a whole indirectly, so please click off this review if you have not read the books and are looking forward to doing so in due time.

Have I ever mentioned that I think childhood friends to lovers is an underrated trope? Have I also mentioned that adding a second chance romance to that is like the best kind of pining, long history muddying the waters, so many things left unspoken romance ever? I loved that element of Sloane and Lucian’s relationship from the Knockemout series and Things We Left Behind sticks out for me for that reason. There is so much potential with childhood lovers second chance and Rewind it Back proves that. How could you not love everything about this book when you get Rio in the most puppy-dog phase ever?

Hallie is such an interesting character and her relationship with Rio, Rio’s mum, and the many things between them all sets this story apart from the others in the series for me. Unlike the other relationships we have seen develop, Hallie and Rio have a complex and rough history already, and neither has fully healed from that. It gives a different vibe to the Rewind it Back, and the flashback chapters we get really solidify that feeling as the relationsip from back then is established, just as both Hallie and Rio are established and develop as they grow up. It is difficult not to love them, individually and together, but seeing their love come together and fall apart is gut-wrenching to say the least and the rekindling of that love is a cautious and dangerous endeavour.

What Rewind it Back has done is justify my reasoning for also buying this series in due course as my joint representative sports romance series alongside Playing for Keeps. I love both of these series so much, and Rewind it Back has really put it into perspective for me that there will be times with romance series where I can’t pick between them – they are both so god and so heartwarming that I can’t not pick them both. I will write up my series review soon and get it posted when the time is right, but I am so excited to see what the spinoff will entail!