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only love can hurt like this paige toon

“Only Love Can Hurt Like This” by Paige Toon is a contemporary, slow‑burn small‑town romance about heartbreak, second chances, and a love that feels almost too costly to risk.

Quick Scoop

  • Author & vibe
    • Contemporary romance by Paige Toon, published in 2023 in the US market.
* Emotional, character‑driven story with strong family themes, grief, and healing, more **heartfelt** love story than light rom‑com.
  • Core premise (no big spoilers)
    • Wren Elmont’s fiancé admits he has fallen in love with his assistant, shattering her plans for marriage and a family.
* To escape, Wren leaves her small English town for her dad’s farm in Indiana, where she meets Anders, the complicated “boy next door” carrying heavy grief over his late wife and a life‑changing secret.

* Their connection grows from tense to tender, but Anders’ past and his secret mean that fully choosing Wren will hurt someone—maybe everyone.

Plot & Themes

  • Key threads
    • Broken engagement and trying to “start over” when your life plan blows up.
* Grief, guilt, and whether you are allowed to move on after losing a partner.

* Complicated family dynamics: Wren reconnects with her largely absent father and gets closer to her half‑sister/stepsister Bailey.

* Mental health is present in the background, particularly through Jonas (Anders’ brother), whose depression and family history are treated with quiet seriousness.
  • Emotional tone
    • Slow‑burn, angsty chemistry with a lot of “almost” moments and suppressed feelings.
* Reviewers describe it as “heart‑wrenching,” “addictive,” and “unable to put down,” especially as a shattering secret is revealed.

* The story leans into that feeling that love can be both salvation and the thing that hurts the most—perfectly echoing the title.

Characters Snapshot

  • Wren
    • An architect from Bury St Edmunds, still reeling after her fiancé Scott falls for his colleague Nadine.
* Uses the Indiana trip both as escape and as a chance to mend family ties and rediscover who she is outside of a relationship.
  • Anders
    • Lives on the neighbouring farm in Indiana; initially reserved, even prickly.
* Lost his wife four years earlier and is still bound up in grief and guilt, which makes opening his heart to Wren incredibly risky.

* Holds a painful secret that means any future with Wren comes with serious fallout for others.
  • Jonas & family
    • Jonas, Anders’ brother, has an important side arc touching on depression and family burden.
* Wren’s dad, stepmother Sheryl, and stepsister Bailey contribute to the found‑and‑real family feel and to Wren’s emotional growth.

Style, Setting & Why It’s Trending

  • Writing and structure
    • Told mainly from Wren’s perspective with strong sense of place: the Indiana farm setting, the bar where she meets Anders and Jonas, and the project of refurbishing a vintage Airstream (“Bambi”) all ground the story.
* Paige Toon is known for emotional love stories; this one is frequently compared to authors like Colleen Hoover and Jojo Moyes for its mix of romance and heartbreak.
  • Why readers are talking about it now
    • Recent US publication plus a romance market hungry for emotional, small‑town stories has kept it visible in book blogs and social media recs into 2024–2025.
* The title echoes the well‑known Paloma Faith song, which draws extra curiosity, even though the book is its own separate story.

Should You Read It?

  • You might love it if you enjoy:
    • Slow‑burn, emotional romances with a lot of longing and moral gray areas.
* Stories about grief, second chances, and complicated family ties, with some heavier themes like depression handled thoughtfully.
  • You might want to skip or be prepared if:
    • You prefer low‑angst, conflict‑free romances, or you are sensitive to themes of loss, depression, and difficult choices in love.

TL;DR: Only Love Can Hurt Like This by Paige Toon is a slow‑burn, emotionally intense farm‑set romance about Wren, whose broken engagement leads her to Indiana, where falling for Anders means confronting grief, guilt, and a devastating secret before either of them can truly move on.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.