Restore Me is about carrying grief while choosing life again. It shows how old wounds shape the people we become and how connection can make healing feel possible, even when we do not expect it.
Sometimes, you walk into something with hope because that is what you were promised from the beginning. So you give it a chance. I went into Restore Me by J. L. Seegars with that same excitement. I wanted an escape. I got some of it, but it also left me wanting.
They say do not judge a book by its cover or its title, but I did. Let me walk through it. We follow Sloane and Dominic, two characters who are meant to be enemies. But it feels more like one-sided resentment, since Sloane keeps trying to be friendly with him, without success.
Sloane is a widow who has decided to stay that way because she believes she already had her chance at love, and it ended tragically. In many ways, she blames herself for her husband Eric’s death. Staying single feels like a punishment she has accepted. And that is the thing with marriage. There are so many layers to it that sometimes you fail to see the other person’s point of view.
“I’m not crazy enough to believe it will happen to me twice, and I certainly don’t deserve it, not after the way I hurt Eric, letting the poison bubbling inside me spill out into our lives, eating through all of our happiness and joy until there was nothing left. Not even him.”
Sloane and Dominic have been tied to each other ever since Eric, Dominic’s best friend, married Sloane. They have lived as enemies from the beginning. The entire family knew nothing could make them civil with each other.
“And nothing, not even losing Eric four years ago at the hands of a drunk driver, has changed the way he views me.”
Sloane is a successful interior designer who runs a company with her sister-in-law, Mal, who is also her closest friend. Dominic owns a construction company, which he once co-owned with Eric. Now the two are forced to work together for a client who is nothing but a pain.
This is where the past begins to creep in, the way it always does when there is an opening. The past never disappears entirely, not for Dominic and Sloane.
They share one thing: parents who cared more about themselves than about their children. For Sloane, her mother knew nothing about raising a kind person. She cared more about appearing kind to the world than being kind to her own family. She judged Sloane for every choice she made, including marrying Eric. She never liked him because he did not belong to her social class. Sloane promised herself she would never be like her.
“And she said I embarrassed myself at Eric’s funeral when I cried. Like I should have been concerned about what other people were thinking about me when I was burying my husband.”
Dominic grew up with an abusive, angry, selfish father who drank heavily and had no care for him or his mother. He would beat them whenever he had the chance. Dominic also promised himself he would never be like his father. But life tests you in ways you cannot always understand. Sometimes the only thing that saves you is remembering why you made that promise in the first place.
“Admitting to reckless and selfish like my father is one thing, but developing an alcohol addiction is something completely different.”
This shared understanding of how consuming it is to fight becoming the worst parts of their parents makes them see each other differently. It softens the enemy narrative they have carried for years. A friendship begins to form. They start trusting each other with their deepest pains and secrets.
They begin to comfort each other. Through this shift, the author explores the complexity of human emotion. Feelings coexist. Life holds dual realities, and both can be true at the same time.
“Being happy doesn’t mean you have forgotten what you have lost. Grief doesn’t work that way, Sloane. Human emotion is more complex than feeling one thing at a time, and happiness doesn’t erase grief; it enhances it. It makes the knowledge of what you have lost more acute, but it also makes it possible to open yourself up again, to make room for what you have lost to come back to you in a different way.”
Restore Me is about carrying grief while choosing life again. It shows how old wounds shape the people we become and how connection can make healing feel possible, even when we do not expect it. The book may run longer than necessary, but its exploration of loss, love and emotional inheritance is thoughtful and sincere. People are rarely just one thing. We are shaped by what we have survived, and by the choices we make when we are ready to begin again.
Jane Shussa is a digital communication specialist with a love for books, coffee, nature, and travel. She can be reached at [email protected].
