Waking Olivia by Elizabeth O’Roark

Series: Standalone

Release Date: March 14, 2016

Format: Kindle

Rating: 4/5 stars

Waking Olivia is an all-time favourite of mine! The complexity of the characters, primarily the heroine, Olivia, made the book excellent. I love characters that are traditionally perceived as broken but overcome their pasts by proving their inherent strengths. While Waking Olivia is a romance, my favourite part was Olivia’s character development. Her story starts being expelled from her Division 1 university and relegated to the only cross-country team that will have her (a Division 3 university, I believe). Her innate talent for long-distance running has dark roots, though; however, all you get are hints to her traumatic past, which she literally tries to run away from – she’s a sleeprunner. The daily struggles Olivia faced were captivating as they revealed her resilience and perseverance. However, Olivia has seemed to have accepted her shit hand, believing she is nothing. As a result, she’s distrustful, doesn’t have friends and abhors authority figures.

Speaking of authority figures, meet the hero of the story, Will, who is the Coach of the female cross-country team… meaning he is Olivia’s new coach. Will proved to be quite a compelling character despite him being an asshole. Getting his perspective allowed me to understand the impossible positions he’s in. However, I want to say his circumstances shouldn’t excuse him for his shit attitude towards Olivia (he was very immature in this regard, i.e. if he can’t have her, no one can). While he is romantically interested in Olivia, he’s unable to act on his feelings (and it’s not just because he has a girlfriend); he works for the university, and it’s his job that keeps his mother’s farm afloat. He would be fired for fraternizing with a student. Also, Olivia is so good at running that Will believes (if she gets her shit together) she’ll eventually be able to go pro and therefore have to move to a city to have access to an excellent training facility. Will would never be able to leave with her since he also keeps his mom’s farm going through all his free labour. Therefore, he’s determined a relationship would never work.

Now, for those readers who are like me and are always wary of the main characters with boyfriends/girlfriends, I have to say that Will’s girlfriend – sadly – does play a major role in Waking Olivia – she’s a significant point of contention between Will and Olivia. Said girlfriend is also a plot device to ensure the main characters couldn’t get together too soon. (Note, you have to read one TMI scene between them.) The girlfriend is also a horrible and petty woman who is aware of Will’s interest in Olivia, resulting in her being a complete bitch to Olivia (she should’ve taken it up with Will, her boyfriend). This was the part of the story that I really couldn’t get over; the main characters become friends, so the fact that Will decided to stay willfully ignorant instead of acknowledging his girlfriend’s antagonism towards Olivia, towards his friend, was horrible. He refused to tell his girlfriend off or stop being friends with Olivia; he wanted to have his cake and eat it, too.  

Also, the only reason Will is dating this girl is that his deceased father – with who Will had a crappy relationship with – believed she was such a nice girl and therefore has his father’s stamp of approval. It’s Will’s way of trying to atone for his disagreements with his father.

Another annoying fact is that while Olivia actually has to deal with Will’s girlfriend being in her face, when Olivia goes on a date – with a really nice boy, by the way – Will gets so jealous and ridiculously possessive. As a result, Will becomes flat-out mean and rude to Olivia (this happens on more than one occasion). In this situation, I appreciated that O’Roark maintained a realistic reality in that Olivia knows Will is off-limits, so she rightly attempts to move on. Kind of sad that I understand that, but as many romance readers are aware, an OM is typically used solely to make the hero jealous. Or, even worse, the heroine doesn’t even bother with an OM and pines in the corner until the hero miraculously wisens up. However, I do have to admit that Olivia does end up falling in love with Will knowing he’s unavailable (also believing he’s too good for her), but she still wants to be around him.

O’Roark paints such a vivid story of pain, love, and forgiveness that I consumed Waking Olivia. And, while I loved Olivia and Will together, I strongly felt throughout the novel that Will didn’t deserve her (although he eventually gets there). He’s fortunate that she didn’t give up on him despite all the crap he put her through.

What’s unique about Waking Olivia is that O’Roark doesn’t end the novel at the traditional point in the story. I.e. after the climactic event, the main characters declare their feelings and agree they’re together. O’Roark makes sure to flesh out all of Olivia’s demons, address her psychological issues, as well as her past traumas and whirlwind relationship with Will, which I sincerely appreciated. As a bonus, there is an epilogue!

Buy Waking Olivia

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