Y’all. Y’all! I almost don’t want to write this review. But I have to. What kind of book review blogger would I be if I didn’t?? I’m not gonna lie, it’s gonna be rough. Like real rough. Also, I’m going to do this one a bit differently… I cannot write this review without spoilers. It’s just impossible. So please click below for my review but be warned, SPOILERS AHEAD!
Okay, let’s get into this hot freakin’ mess of a series. It started great and about half way through the first book, it all went to hell. Let’s start off with a synopsis and then I’ll get into the detailed review:
Synopsis: Blake was three or four years old when she woke up in the middle of the night to find her mother dead, her father being taken and then being kidnapped herself. She’s taken to a woman who is supposedly her Aunt Shelley. Fast forward until Blake is 12 years old and Aunt Shelley dies and Blake is taken to a woman named Maggie. Maggie has three other boys who live with her (Cole, Aubry and Greg). Blake and Cole fall in love of course and over the next several years, go through the ups and downs of a normal relationship. From here, the book is supposed to be about what happened to her mom and dad. Cole also has a history as he was also left at Maggie’s by his parents, supposedly. Cole and Blake’s histories end up connecting and they both try to unravel their pasts.
- Romance: Blake and Cole are the big love story of the book. You see their love story unfold in flashbacks as well as in the present. They do make a cute couple. I’m not sure that Blake deserves Cole… he’s almost typical alpha male in his too good to be true way. Blake turns into a clingy, jealous mess as book one and two progresses. At first, the unfurling of their love story is very cute and heart warming to see. It starts becoming a bit mundane in the second book. There’s the typical bouts of jealousy which seem so out of place given what they are both going through.
- Grammar/Editing: Dude. How hard it is to get a damn editor? This book was riddled with spelling errors. There were other blatant errros, such as wrong chapter headings (the book flips between past and present) and these were often mislabeled. These are mistakes that shouldn’t have made it past a read through much less an editor and beta readers.
- Storyline: Okay, this is where things get rough. Initially, the storyline is incredible and exciting. Blake and Cole were both kidnapped and have no idea about their parents or anything. You get the feeling that their whole lives are carefully constructed by SOMEONE to keep them safe…ish. Then shit starts going down with Blake being kidnapped again and held against her will. All super exciting, right? WRONG!! There are such holes and gaps in these books that are completely unbelievable. The characters are completely unbelievable. Their reactions are completely unbelievable.If you can believe it, after all the “action,” there was absolutely no real explanation for why Blake and Cole were kidnapped in the beginning, why Blake’s mom was murdered and why their lives were in danger by “bad guys” as they got older. Moreover, Blake and Cole ended up being FRIENDS with the very people that were involved in the murder of Blake’s mother as well as she and Cole’s kidnapping. It seemed like one rogue agent was the one who caused things to go out of control. Both families were supposedly mob-type families, so why not kill the rogue agent and all of the heartache would have been avoided. Everyone seemed to just stand by and let horrible things happen and that made no sense at all. In the end, the whole drama was all explained as a dispute over money. For real? Two books and all that drama and the explanation was money? SUCH a letdown!!
Let’s talk about those characters. First of all, there were only 10981287236498124 characters. I seriously started getting very very confused. Also, all of them were connected in some way, shape or form and that also got super confusing. I was reading this with a friend and we kept having to ask each other “Now, who is he? How is he connected?” It was way too much and really completely unnecessary. One of the main guys involved in Blake and Cole’s initial kidnapping ends up being Blake’s attorney and she trusts him even though he knows EVERYTHING. She also doesn’t press him for information. Once she finally meets him and figures out that he knows everything and has been super involved in everything, it makes no sense what-so-ever why she doesn’t demand answers. Her mother was KILLED. Her father was presumably dead as well. She was ripped from her life. WHY wouldn’t she be desperate for answers? This is one of many examples where Blake and Cole was presented with chances to get information and didn’t. There was one time where MONTHS went by where they just sat back and lived life without a care in the world, apparently. They also trusted people who showed that they were involved in the past kidnapping and present kidnapping. At the end, Blake ends up being friends with one of the kidnappers that actually hit her from time to time while she was kidnapped as an adult. I just don’t get it. It makes everything totally unbelievable.
At the end of the day, the things that made these two books horrible were the tons of characters, but inauthentic reactions of the characters, the unbelievable way the characters are connected and how people are trusted that shouldn’t be.
- Special: I think the overall start of this series is special. I loved my first impression of the storyline – I just hate how the author developed it. The mom-killed-daughter-kidnapped story was super interesting and it could have been really amazing but the author killed it. We got no real explanation for why the mom was killed and daughter kidnapped.
- Recommend: I’m not sure if y’all could tell by now, but I absolutely would NOT recommend this series. Don’t do it. Just don’t. It’s horrible. It’s the best worst book I’ve ever read. It had SO MUCH potential, which is why I feel so let down by this series.
I apologize for the super negative and long review. I had a lot of thoughts and opinions. I want to keep this blog as honest and truthful as possible, so that’s going to mean the occasional bad review. I hope it’s not going to be a regular thing but gotta keep it real, y’all.
See you in my next review, y’all!
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