anasmith7186896

3.5 stars

Unfortunately, not as good as Knight. I’m a bit disappointed, but will still be reading Raid when it comes out.

First we got Sylvie. She’s definitely different from other KA heroines. She is, in her own words, a badass. She’s much harder, life made her so. After all the abuse in her life, she had to adapt or die. But she made it. She has a job she loves, her friends, and she found a new family for herself. What she doesn’t need is a blast from the past in form of Tucker Creed.

Creed has never stopped loving his Sylvie. A lifetime ago, he was forced to abandon her, and ever since she has been a ghost in his life, a ghost that simply won’t allow him to forget, to love again. Now that the opportunity has come to deal with it, to win her love again he will do whatever it takes to get his Sylvie back.

Unlike most other KA couples, Sylvie and Creed have a past. One that is at the same time sweet and full of love, and so bloody tragic. They met when they were children, united by bad things. A snippet from that moment:

Tucker kept pushing us then he said, “We’re in the sun.”
I blinked.
“What?” I asked.
“We’re in the sun. On the pier. By the lake.”
“Get off me, bitch!” the man shouted, I closed my eyes tight but my hands came up, lifting high, I put them over his ears.
“We’re in the sun,” I agreed, seeing it, feeling it.
We were on the pier on the lake in the sun.

They grew up together, shared both good and bad. Until evil forces tore them apart (I know that sounds melodramatic, but trust me, it fits). There is a lot of bitterness on Sylvie’s side. So, when they meet again, there is a lot of angst:

I wanted to see him again so he could take me away like he promised. Time passed and my life that had been swirling flushed down the toilet and I wanted to see him again so I could scream in his face, kick him, beat him, share exactly what his betrayal meant to my heart and my life. How, when he left, a shit life that was only ever good when I was breathing his air turned even more shit.

That time was not now. I was over it. I’d gotten out, moved on, lived my own life how I wanted to live it, not how someone forced me to live it. It wasn’t easy. It was fucking hard. It nearly ended me.

But I did it and I was here. I liked my life.

And I didn’t look back.

*************

“Sylvie.”

At the sound of my name coming from his lips, raw washed through me, a feeling I last felt drunk on my couch in Charlene’s arms on my birthday last year.

A feeling I’d felt time and again before I learned how not to feel it anymore.

A feeling that threatened to shred me now.

A feeling that with lots of practice I buried.

************

Although he wore the years that passed from top to toe, his eyes had not changed. Sky blue, bright, the color so stark in his tan, rugged face that it seemed to glimmer.

Eyes I saw in my dreams, even now, if I admitted it to myself.

Eyes I saw in my head on the rare occasion I let my mind wander and it went there, to the glory days tarnished with betrayal. Eyes that I remembered.

But this nearly broke my heart:

I’d drawn blood on his back as well as his neck and you could see other scratch marks.

None of them marred the tattoo that spanned the entirety of his skin.

A pier.

A lake.

A horizon.

The sun shining.

And along the pier a name spelled out in flowers up the indent of his lower spine.

“Sylvie”

And then when they come to terms with the past (Creed can be a sweet talker):

”For me, we had this one day, that was it, I walked out your front door tomorrow and got shot dead, I’d die happy. And I’d die happy because, even for a day, I had you back with me. Seems I lived a dozen fuckin’ lifetimes knowin’ that would never be. Havin’ it means everything to me. So, I’m not scared. Two things in my whole life I wanted. My Dad back and you. Now, you’re tucked close to me, so that works for me.”

***********

“Born to love you, baby,” he repeated. “Die lovin’ you, my Sylvie.”

I really liked the first half of the book. Sylvie and Creed were trying to get to know these people they became after all the hardships of their lives. There were bittersweet glimpses of their pasts that I liked a lot.

Unfortunately, after they said “I love you” to each other, the book fizzled. It seemed like nothing important happened. The only thing from the second half that made sense was Sylvie meeting Creed’s kids. Everything else didn’t really stand up. The worst part is definitely the suspense plot (anti)climax. It simply made no sense. Didn’t like it at all.

True, there were some other things that weren’t so perfect. It took me a while to actually like Creed. Some of his actions in the past were distasteful to me. Like him naming his kids the names Sylvie wanted for her own. That was low and in hurt not only his ex, but Sylvie as well. At that time, I HATED him. It still riles me up to think of it.

And then there were the great things. Like seeing Knight again. I LOVE that guy. And we see some other sides of him, the loyal one, the gentle one.

But the amazing thing (which made me round up the rating to 4 stars) was the awesome epilogue. KA certainly rocks them. :D

Anxiously awaiting Raid, the next book in the series.