4.5 stars
“I’ll be here, each day and every day on, as long as you want me to be.”
LOVED THIS BOOK!!!!
This was exactly the kind of read I needed right now! It was not too long, had a romance that made my heart pound, twists that made my heart race, and a really seriously swoony and tortured bad boy hero! What’s not to love??
The story hooked me right from the first paragraph – I took an instant liking to it and it just immediately put you right inside the narrator’s head and had me flipping pages like crazy!
I absolutely adored the writing style!! It perfectly balanced lighthearted and serious. On the surface, its this classic bad boy meets good girl story but, right from the beginning, you can feel deeper, darker, painful undertones and you just know that when you learn the back stories, its going to be heart-wrenching.
You could just feel the sizzling chemistry/connection that Lucy and Jude had when they first met. I swear I felt like I was meeting him myself – my heart was pounding and just completely melted 🙂
Jude Ryder *squee/swoon* is a true bad boy and I literally loved him from the moment he showed up! He was like Travis Maddox‘s long lost brother – arrogant, cocky, with a bad reputation and a 2-page rap sheet, but so heart-racingly sexy and swoont and HOT but deeply tortured beneath the surface that you really can’t help but fall in LOVE!
“The name’s Jude Ryder, since I know you’re all but salivating like a rabid dog to know, and I don’t do girlfriends, relationships, flowers, or regular phone calls. If that works for you, I think we could work out something special.”
Gah! The nerve on him!! lol. Of course Lucy turns him right down but he’s not one to be deterred. He sees something special in her and is willing to turn his life around for the better in order to win her heart. The road to that isn’t smooth – its drama-filled, with page-turning twists, heart-break and secrets that took me completely by surprise and I loved every minute of it!
“…it’s hard not to notice something special when life’s thrown a lotta shit your way.”
But seriously, my heart just broke for Jude and his past 🙁 Seeing someone who clearly has such a good heart be haunted by these demons and be made to think so little of himself was heart breaking. He’s “a boy with beautiful eyes and an ugly past”, a total and complete bad boy with a bit of a temper (especially triggered when people attack or insult his girl) who has led a very rough life, but has a heart of gold and is just totally into his girl! *SWOON* and I loved that he had a deeper side to him – life taught him some hard lesson, perhaps far too soon, but with Lucy’s help, he tried so hard to overcome his past. LOVED HIM!! <3
“This guy was every kind of wrong on the surface, but there was something more there, something I’d seen in that flash of vulnerability that sucked me in.”
And I loved that Lucy was no pushover. She stood up to her parents, she didn’t let gossip get the better of her, she had a huge heart and took a chance on Jude when all the signs were pointing against it.
Jude and Lucy have a lot of roadblocks in their path, but I just loved that neither of them really denied their affections for each other. They struggled through some pretty tough times, but throughout it all, their hearts belonged to each other… really a story of two people from different worlds finding a way to be together against all the odds.
“…I’ll need you to promise me something…If I ever mess things up again, whether it’s a missunderstanding or shit luck, or I just do what I was created to do and screw everything up… I want you to promise me you’ll leave. Drop me like a bad habit and don’t look back, because god knows, it can’t be me that walks away since I’m incapable of it.”
What is it about swoony tortured player bad boys that just fall head over heels for their girl that is just so heart-melting? 🙂
“Who, in all God’s Gracious green earth… Is that?”… “Honey, a girl cant keep a man like that as a friend. He’s a lover or an ex-lover, but never a friend. Men like that weren’t created to be a woman’s friend – they were created to make a woman hit high C three times in a row.”
This book was a wonderful balance of squee-worthy grin-enducing scenes and tortured characters, and despite it not being a long book, it made you care so deeply for the characters. The only thing I would have wished for was an epilogue. It had a HEA but I still wanted more.
Fans of Beautiful Disaster are almost sure to love this book as well. Its YA with very light steamy (mostly some seriously HOT kisses).
I am absolutely hooked on this author’s style – she has some serious story-telling talent – and look forward to reading more of her books.
Nicole Williams says
Thank you for a lovely review. I loved the quotes you picked out, as well as the character portrayals!
Carole says
Hi there, would you like to link in to “Books You Loved”? Here is the link Books You Loved August Edition
Aestas says
oh wow! thats a cool idea Carole 🙂
Does it have to be a book I read this month or just any fav book?
Aestas says
@Nicole: oh wow I totally missed your comment! I’m so glad you like the review!!!