Release date: September 15th, 2020
Series: / standalone
Pages: 436
Genre: New adult
Series: / standalone
Pages: 436
Genre: New adult
A broken boy on the path to destruction.
A scarred girl without direction.
A love story carved in secrets, inked with pain and sealed with a lie.
Grace Shaw and West St. Claire are arctic opposites.
She is the strange girl from the food truck.
He is the mysterious underground fighter who stormed into her sleepy Texan college town on his motorcycle one day, and has been wreaking havoc since.
She is invisible to the world.
He is the town’s beloved bad boy.
She is a reject.
He is trouble.
When West thrusts himself into Grace’s quiet life, she scrambles to figure out if he is her happily-ever-after or tragic ending.
But the harder she pushes him away, the more he pulls her out of her shell.
Grace doesn’t know much about anything beyond her town’s limits, but she does know this:
She is falling in love with the hottest guy in Sheridan U.
And when you play with fire—you ought to get burned.
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| * |
Coming from L. J. Shen, this book was weirdly ... normal. When it comes to her, I always expect surprises (mostly unpleasant ones) because we all know she likes to go overboard with crazy relationships and the shit she calls love ...
This book wasn't perfect by any means, either. I only gave it three stars because the ending was absolutely beautiful and I liked the character development.
But, first things first, I didn't like West. I came to realise that I rarely ever like the male characters in her books because while I love the whole bad boy vibe and them being assholes, L. J. Shen tends to take it over the top and exaggerates it to the point they're not sexy anymore, they're just assholes and it's so hard to like them.
Also, the whole violent streak is cool to some extend, but it's not funny when there are lines like, "Or you'll leave me no choice but to slap the hysteria out of you.", "I'll flip you upside down and shake the answer out of you." Modern romance, I guess. Maybe I just don't get it.
Then, of course, it was West screwing someone else that looked like Grace and called her Texas (his nickname for Grace). And the whole hooking up with Tess the first night he officially met Grace. His exact words were: It was the same night I'd bent her over the Ducati and fucked her raw in the junkyard, barking at her to mind the paint.
Watch out, guys! We have a real charmer here! It's just so easy to fall in love with someone like him, don't you think so?
Also the sentence, "It looked way rape-ier than it actually was." What the hell does that even mean?!!
The only good thing in this book was Grace. She's precious. A good girl, of course. She deserves way better than West, but, hey, he gives her just a little bit of his attention and she's all for it.
Both West and Grace have a tragic background and that's basically what connects them the most.
This book was so normal that it got boring in the middle and I was struggling to read on, actually. West was being too much of an ass and it was hard to read about that for literally 3/4 of the book.
But the ending was beautiful and the growth in them was enormous, especially in Grace. And I have to give it to West, he wasn't (too big of an) asshole to Grace about her face and her past, but he accepted all her imperfections and didn't make a big deal out of them.
❝Because the worst day of your life gave me the best version of you.❞
I still hated this book a little less than other by her that everyone seem to absolutely love. I just don't really get the asshole type in her books and I absolutely hate the male characters she creates because she takes being an asshole to a whole new level to a point it's not cool anymore and it's straight-out concerning that people read it and think that's normal or, even worse, cute and romantic.
So, yeah. This was ok for the most part and there were some beautiful messages in the book that moved me and that's what made me rate it three stars.
❝Because at the end of the day, we are all just phoenixes, rising from our own ashes, taking flight to an unknown destination, our wingtips forged by flames.❞
When she's not writing, she enjoys reading a good book with a glass of wine and catching up on her favorite HBO and Netflix shows.
Yeah, she's a badass like that.
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