By Tanya Eavenson
Jacob Michaels never liked his best friend's wife. He couldn't see why Clay Logan wanted to marry Olivia. But when the unimaginable happens and Jacob is named Olivia's trustee, he begins to see her in a new light.
Until I Knew You takes the reader on a journey of understanding and looking beyond labels. Olivia is autistic, an artist, a widow, and grieving. Jacob is a photographer, an orphan, a former child, and he too is caught up in his grief.
Shared loss forces Jacob and Olivia to spend time together, but this allows Jacob to finally see the woman that his best friend fell in love with. But Olivia is also a reminder of his guilt concerning Clay's death.
I appreciated how the author portrayed Olivia-her strengths, her weaknesses, her quirks-she was presented as multilayered woman who knew her own mind yet was limited by what others viewed as limitations. I admired Clay for having the foresight to pick someone who would honor his wishes regarding Olivia, someone who would fight for her, allow her to grow, to see past the limitations and labels others placed upon her. This is a book about second chances.
I highly recommend this book that is emotionally moving while celebrating the beauty of God's creation and His love.
I was provided a complimentary copy of this book with no expectations. All thoughts expressed are my own.
About the Book
Title: Until I Knew You
Author: Tanya Eavenson
Publisher: All Roads Publishing
Release Date: 4/21/26
Genre: Christian contemporary romance, women’s fiction
Photographer Jacob Michaels has spent his life running, from foster homes, from emotional attachment, from anything that asks more of him than a fleeting moment through his camera lens, except for Clay Logan, his one true friend and the only person who ever saw past the walls.
Olivia Logan lives in a world of color and quiet, expressing through art what words cannot, and Clay understood her without explanation, offering a steady presence in a world that often feels overwhelming.
But when a hiking trip ends in tragedy and Jacob returns alone, everything changes, and Clay’s final request becomes Jacob’s new reality: take care of Olivia, protect her, don’t walk away.
Now her legal trustee, Jacob steps into a life he never intended. Bound by grief and a promise neither asked for, he and Olivia are drawn into a fragile closeness they don’t know how to navigate.
And perhaps God isn’t finished mending what was never meant to be broken.
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