“Love doesn’t magically heal all wounds.”
This was a totally random, unplanned read that I just started and finished in one sitting this afternoon! A friend of mine was starting it and I thought the blurb sounded great so I pretty much just dove in too.
Overall, I’d call it a quick, entertaining erotic story with a premise that drew me in from the start. The first 30% of the book was absolutely amazing — everything from the set up, to the writing, to the character development had my heart racing in the best possible way. After that though, the erotic side of the story took over a little more than I would have preferred. Don’t get me wrong, I loooove hot stories, but in full honesty, I would have preferred more plot and less sex here just because of how freaking awesome the story set up was. It was just so good that I wanted more character development and to see more in depth conflict. But… on the flip side, sometimes you just want something hot and sexy to read so if you’re in the mood for something shorter and erotic but with a little more depth than just sex, this would be great.
Like I said, the book hooked me from the very first line. The story is about a woman with a scary past (she’d been stalked to nightmarishly terrifying point) who lived next door to a mysterious, reclusive man who everyone talked about but nobody knew. They made up all sorts of stories about him, but no one actually knew anything about him. When she finds him sleepwalking in her garden one night, wearing almost nothing, ankle deep in freezing mud, she invites him in to help him get cleaned up. He’s nothing like she expected though and from then on, their lives become quickly entwined…
“You should have been scared; you weren’t.
You should have forced me back across the street; you didn’t.
You touched me even though it made you tremble to do it, and I won’t ever forget that.”
Tortured heroes are my weakness — they just melt my heart — and Noah was such an intriguing character. He was incredibly intelligent and fascinating — a psychoanalyst left emotionally scared after working on a case profiling a particularly gruesome serial killer. I loved the symbolism of how his house was filled with broken things he was putting back together. “He so desperately wants to fix things he fills his living room with junk and spends his days making everything okay again.” — That just makes my heart squeeze!
I also really loved that feeling that the first 30% of the book really portrayed so well of just not knowing these characters’ histories. I had so many questions — What had happened to this woman in her past? And what about him? What kept this man locked away from the world?
Once they got together, things got pretty hot between them and a good chunk of the rest of the book does basically revolve around sex — not that there’s anything wrong with that, but just letting you know the direction it takes. There are bits of Noah’s past that come into the light along the way though and then it culminates in finale that bought out the ‘thriller’ side. There’s a resolved ending — no cliffhanger!
I generally really enjoyed the writing — there were a lot of very strong, evocative scenes with vivid imagery — but there were other times when I found the wording confusing. By that I mean, it was sometimes unclear whether you were reading her thoughts or a description of what was actually happening.
Oh, also just letting you know that the book ends at 87%. I know that’s something a few of you are sensitive to so just a heads up so you know. Amazon lists the page count as 224 pages so this is kind of a short novel. So, even though I wish there’d been more depth to it, I did enjoy this as just a quick, hot, entertaining read with a bit of a moody, thrilling edge to it, a unique premise, and intriguing characters.
Rating: Almost 4 stars. Standalone.
First standalone in a series of standalones.
