Book Review – Thief (Love Me With Lies #3) by Tarryn Fisher

• Buy Book #1 – THE OPPORTUNIST (Kindle) – read my review
• Buy Book #2 – DIRTY RED (Kindle) – read my review
• Buy Book #3 – THIEF (Kindle)

5 stars!

Note to self:

Love is patient; love is kind.
Love doesn’t boast or brag.
There’s no arrogance in love;
it’s never rude, crude, or indecent – it’s not self absorbed.
Love isn’t easily upset.

Love doesn’t tally wrongs.
Love trusts, hopes, and endures no matter what.
Love will never become obsolete.

I’ll fight for her.

– Thief

Thief is the conclusion to the beautiful, tangled love story that started out in The Opportunist. Please note that this is not a standalone. The three books in this series must be read in order because it’s one continuous story.

Caleb and Olivia have one of the most heart-breakingly dysfunctional and yet achingly beautiful love stories I’ve ever read. They had an irreplaceable love proved unbreakable even by a lifetime of mistakes. They were destructive, made the wrong choices and paid the painful price for their mistakes but you couldn’t help but root for them every step of the way.  Their journey was an intense, heartbreaking, non-stop roller coaster filled to the brim with every possible emotion you can imagine.

“She’s mine. She always has been, she always will be. We’ve been running in opposite directions for the last ten years, and we collide at every turn. Sometimes it’s because we’re looking for each other, other times it’s fate.

She has the kind of love that can stain your soul, make you beg not to have one, just to escape the spell she’s put you under. I’ve tried to break myself of her over and over, but it’s pointless. I’ve got more of her in my veins than blood… 

We’re not over. We’ll never be over.”

The truth of is that this is a second-chance love story. The difference between this one and the usual ones is that in this story you live through the years of separation and mistakes along with the characters and go through their whole tangled love story with them – start to finish – and because you’ve been through every moment of heartbreak and pain right along side them, when the happiness shines through you value it so much more and can appreciate it with every part of your heart and soul because you *know* the price they paid for it.

My heart was racing with anticipation from the very first line of this book. This was IT. It was really happening. The last hurdle. And what an incredible opening chapter!!! One of the very best!

Because of the way this story had built from the first book, I really felt like I had lived these characters lives with them. Their memories were my memories. Little things like “the pool where I first kissed her” came loaded with a whole slew of heart-pounding emotions.

This book tells Caleb’s POV. Finally we get to see what was going on inside his mind. Why did he fall in love with Olivia? Why did he push so hard? Why did he walk away? Why did he waste those 5 years? What made him hurt? What made him love? What drove his actions? And most importantly we see the true depth of how completely and all-consumingly he loved Olivia.

It’s like he finally got her. Or maybe he did all along and wasn’t ready to admit it. But either way, this was the turning point. He was ready to fight for her.

“I can’t stay away from you. I’ve been trying for ten years.”

But I won’t lie, sometimes it hurt to see the raw honesty of Caleb’s thoughts. They were… naked. Uninhibited. Painfully truthful. He was no Boy Scout, that’s for sure, but it was impossible not to love him. Flaws, mistakes, imperfections and all.

As with the first two books, this one wove both the past and present together – starting from flashbacks of when they first met and going through their lives highlighting milestones and key turnings points that, for better or for worse, changed their lives forever. There was no repetitiveness in the flashbacks but rather they gave new insight into everything and filled in the blanks by giving us answers, clarifications and explanations that slowly brought the last broken threads of this story together.

I absolutely loved that Caleb genuinely loved Olivia for who she was. He wasn’t some starry eyed romantic who saw her in a different light just because he was in love with her. No, he saw right into her and he fell in love with her just. as. she. was.

“I tried to break her before. Now, I just wanted her as she was. I wanted every last beautiful flaw. I wanted the witty one-liners and the coldness that only I knew how to warm. I wanted the fight and the friction and the make-up sex. I wanted her to wake up in my bed every morning. I wanted her shitty cooking and her beautiful, complex mind.”

Overall I found this book more sad than angsty, unlike the first two. I’d reached the point where my heart was almost permanently broken. I just wanted them to be happy so badly. I wanted them to be together in more than just their hearts. The weight of it all was almost too much. Too sad. Too heart breaking.

“Do you remember the orange grove, Olivia?”

And just when I thought things couldn’t get sadder, new bombshells of pain were dropped. There were moments so powerfully emotional that I could do nothing other than just sit there and cry.

“I want your babies, and your anger, and your cold blue eyes…” I choke on my words and I am the one to look away. I bring my gaze back to her face and realize that if I can’t convince her now, I’m never going to be able to. “I want to go on anniversary dinners with you, I want to wrap Christmas presents with you. I want to fight with you about stupid things and then hold you down in my bed and make it up to you. I want to have more cake batter fights and camping trips. I want your future, Olivia. Please come back to me.”

Caleb and Olivia were just such a heart-breakingly dysfunctional mess – desperately in love with each other and yet forever ruining their chances of happiness. I don’t even have words to describe the frustration and pain.

“How many times can a heart be broken before it is beyond mend?”

My heart was yo-yoed with. Toyed with. Trampled. Broken. Shattered. Mended. And broken again.

The book made me angry. Furious. Frustrated. I wanted to punch the wall, scream at the characters and then just sob into my pillow because I loved them so much and their pain became my pain and their precious moments of happiness became seconds I’d desperately cling to.

“I don’t love anything more than I love you.”

I find it interesting that I loved this story as much as I did (5 stars for every book) because even though it was loaded with nearly everything that usually bothers me in books, I still loved and was captivated by every single word of this trilogy. I swear to you, more than half my book is highlighted.

Tarryn Fisher has a way of making you feel every moment of the story with every piece of your heart. The writing is just phenomenal. Absolutely phenomenal.

This book is full of these little beautiful things that are just loaded with memories, meaning and emotion. Airport blue. The penny. The tree. Cherry Garcia. The deflated basket ball. The orange grove. Jaxson’s. Duchess. Peter Pan. *sob*

The ending was bittersweet. Perfect in it’s imperfections… just like them.

I didn’t know what to think at first. When I finished (at 3AM, I might add) I actually just sat there on the couch for about an hour staring blankly in front of me processing my various emotions. I needed to come to terms with the story. Then, over an hour later, my heart still heavy and aching, I went back and reread the epilogue and just sobbed. It was like I needed that time to come to terms with it and accept it.

I loved it. I hated it. I loved it. I hated it. I was mad. Mad at them for their decisions in life. If only they’d just made different choices. They came so close so many times to happiness. The pain and devastation that they brought down on themselves and had to go through over the years gutted me. But their love had held strong throughout all of the pain, the mistakes, the wrong turns. It withstood it all and survived. They survived. Together.

 We are gonna be okay. That’s what happens when two people are meant to be. You just work it out until you are okay.

If you’re looking for a fairy tale, this isn’t the story for you. Nothing could erase the past. Mistakes were made, wrong turns were taken, and their promise of a better tomorrow would forever be haunted by the ghosts of ‘what if’s’ and laced with regret for the past and for missed opportunities they could never get back. There was hope, happiness and healing but it was won at a heavy price. In the end, I was given the things I needed at the cost of the things I wanted.

I have to say though that it was incredibly well done and I seriously commend Tarryn Fisher’s brilliant storytelling for this because I think that in the end, we were left feeling exactly how Caleb and Olivia felt.

They’d had an unconventional romance and so their ending was no different. They were happy and together at the end and honestly, I couldn’t ask for anything more. But still, the tears wouldn’t stop falling, my heart won’t stop aching, and I can promise you that I will never forget this story.

I’m writing this almost a full 24 hours after finishing the book and I have the book hangover of the century. I can’t stop thinking about this story. Pieces of it just keep playing over and over again in my mind.

Flawed. Dysfunctional. Beautiful.

This is a must-read trilogy!

5 stars!!

Casting – I actually really like the pics used on the covers…

• Caleb
• Olivia
• Leah

 

“LOVE ME WITH LIES” SERIES READING ORDER

Book #1 – The Opportunist – Kindle | Paperback | My Review

Book #2 – Dirty Red –  Kindle | Paperback | My Review

Book #3 – Thief –  Kindle | Paperback | My Review