Long Walk Home by Lilian Darcy

Everyone has baggage by the time they’re into their thirties.
When single mom and Marietta High School teacher Gemma Clayton acquires a strong, family-oriented and very good-looking new neighbor over her back fence, she’s not put off by his complicated past as the attraction flares between them. Her own past is a very different matter, however.
Nobody knows what she went through on the night of the 1996 Marietta High School senior prom, between running after Judd and Garth Newell’s car as it left River Bend Park and limping into her friend Neve Shepherd’s street two hours later.
But Gemma’s secrets have been rusted up inside her for so long that not even a gorgeous man like Dylan Saddler can help her to break them free.

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I enjoyed the love and attraction between Gemma and Dylan, two grown up people, with a connection, that grew over time. They had the time to get to know each other, for months talking over the backyard fence. They felt the attraction, the pull for each other, and with time, acted on it. Dylan's belief that Gemma had just waited on him, was endearing.
There were secrets, so many of them, and they were serious, life changing secrets. Baggage was on both sides of the fence, but they dealt with the issues, forming a team and support system for each other that was admirable.
As a part of the series, questions from the past were answered, brought into the light. As the story unfolds, the family unit, as unconventional as it is, is forming. The growth within the characters was noticeable. I wish there would have a bit more insights into the future, what and how some of the issues were dealt with, how the family functions in the future. Overall, a charming tale of family, love, dealing with past hurt, and how undisclosed issues and events in a person's life, can form a prison inside, and keep from living in the truest of the potential of life.
~ Three spoons with a teaspoon on the side