“Only for you will I fight this fight.”
For any fans of “fighter” heroes, this is a book you should definitely check out! It’s a second chance story between a tattooed, pierced fighter with a heart wrenching past he couldn’t remember and a girl from his past who couldn’t forget him and was holding onto a secret that could change his life.
The dedication of the book says it all:
“To every child who waited for a savior that never came.”
The story started off with a prologue that set up their past. When they were little kids, her family fostered him. Sounds sweet, right? No. It was a nightmare. They kept him locked away in the basement, never allowed him out, and he had “visitors” that came to see him frequently. As a child, she didn’t understand what was going on but every night, once her parents were asleep, she’d sneak downstairs and sing to him as he sat on the other side of the door and cried himself to sleep. Then one day, he was taken away and she never heard from him again.
Cut to the present day, Rex is a fighter by profession and also the lead singer in a band. Tattooed, pierced, and oh-so damaged on the inside. He craved pain, hated sex, and couldn’t remember his past…. But she remembered. And she’d been following him for past several months after finally tracking him down determined to tell him a secret from his past that might give him answers.
“A past he can’t remember.
A past he doesn’t know exists.
A past that I can give back to him.”
My heart truly broke for Rex and what he was going through but I thought this book did a fantastic job of portraying the way his repressed memories of trauma affected his life and I loved watching him slowly open up to her and warm up to the idea of a relationship with someone for the first time in his life. I think I just have a really big soft spot for the damaged heroes… they just make my heart break and melt simultaneously in a way that makes it nearly impossible for me not to fall in love with them. And Rex was no exception.
“The pain. It’s the only thing that reminds me I’m alive. When most of the time I wish I were dead.”
I really loved how understanding she was of him. He truly had a lot of damage even though he couldn’t remember the cause of it and she genuinely loved and accepted him for who he was — for how he was — without any judgement. She knew the horrors that had shaped him and she appreciated how far he’d come on perhaps even a greater level than he could given that she knew the truth about his past.
“He needs me, just as he did back then. But rather than pull him from the circumstances of his present, he needs answers to the past. Answers I can give him.”
Now, I want to say that I really loved the first 65% of the book (like, I was sitting at a very happy 4.5 star rating) but there was a turn of events around this time that I really didn’t like. I was totally understood the situation that caused it though — and I think that that the reactions were valid and made perfect sense for each of the characters respectively — but where it led to was a place that made me lose some respect for both of them. I was disappointed with each of their choices and also didn’t fully feel like it made sense for either of their characters honestly. But luckily this part of the book didn’t last too long and once they got through it, the book picked back up again for me and ended on a note that I was really happy with it 🙂
Rating: 4+ stars. Standalone (but part of a series).
Note: this book can technically be read as a standalone if you want but there are two books that precede it in the series. Each book is about a different couple and those couples are all friends so you do see them in this book. Personally, I’ve read the first book in this series but I didn’t read the second and I was totally fine understanding everything that happened in this book so it’s really up to you how you want to read them. I’ll link them all up below for you though in case you prefer to read them all.
They are listed here in order. Click the covers to purchase.
