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Genre:
Contemporary Romance/ Adult Fiction
Summary on Goodreads:
Then, one stormy August night, he died, and the person I was died with him.
Colton didn't teach me how to live. He didn't heal the pain. He didn't make it okay. He taught me how to hurt, how to not be okay, and, eventually, how to let go.
***MY REVIEW***
“I don’t want it to get easier.” “Why?” She took the brush from my nightstand and tugged on me until I sat up. She brushed my hair with long, smooth strokes, reminding me of when I was a girl. She would sing to me and brush my hair before bed. “Because if it gets easier…I’ll forget him.”
What would you do if you met someone you thought the love of your life, your soul-mate, had it for one fleeting second and then lost it forever? What would you do if everything happened right in front of your eyes? Would you be able to forget and move on or would you let yourself drown by the memories, guilt and pain?
I'm a big masochist reader meaning this book was a special treat for me. Dark, Fucked-Up & Emotional, with huge emphasis on emotional and definitely a WaY Too Hot read. When I see these 4 adjectives when reading book reviews, I'm an instant goner. This was also the case with this book. It will break your heart all over again, especially just when you think that things are finally getting better. The story will slap you in the face saying: guess again. I definitely didn't expect it to be this dark, but I'm glad it was. It made the story more real and believable.
Even though I liked the book very much, I must admit, it took me awhile to get into it in the beginning. Not until the big "slap in the face" did I start to feel all the hype everyone else kept talking about and not until Colton finally came in the picture. Kyle was good, sweet and all, a little overwhelming at times, but I just couldn't connect to his character at all the way I did later with Colton. Adding to that my mixed feelings about Nell, the main female character of the story. I just couldn't understand how can she be so broken and mourn Kyle's death, the supposed love of her life, and at the same time fall so instantly for Colton, who's btw his older brother. It was really disturbing in the beginning. I don't understand it even now after I finished the book, but then again, when reading about Kyle and Nell in the beginning of the story, I always had the feeling that Kyle was more into her, than she was into him. The good thing is that, even though it was kind of insta attraction between her and Colton, it took them years to actually act on it and that's why in the end I was o.k. with everything that happened.
She’s got so much pain, so many cracks and shards and jags in her soul, and I’m going to get cut by her if I’m not careful. I can’t fix her. I know this too. I’m not going to try. I’ve had too many goody-goody girls hook up with me, thinking they can fix me. I also know I’m not going to stay away. I’m going to grab onto her and let myself get cut. I’m good at pain. I’m good at bleeding, emotionally and physically.
“How do you compete with a ghost, Colton?” I whisper the question into a long silence. He shrugs. “I don’t know. You don’t. You just understand that there’s a part of you that you can’t give away, because it belongs to a dead person.
The story is told from, both, Nell's and Colton's pov. My favorite character was definitely Colton. He is the type of a guy who, just when you think that you can't love him more than you already do, surprises you all over. Musicians are my weak spot, I admit it. I completely fell in love with him when he sang her the song he wrote, his own, personal lullaby for a lonely and misunderstood child he once was. It was both beautiful and heartbreaking, because just like Nell, Colton is also deeply broken with a dark past haunting him, and the question is will Nell be the one who will finally help him heal or will she be the one who'll break him for good? The sex scenes between them where smoking hot and very explicit, but the musical part of story and Colton's poems are definitely my favorite parts of the book. I love how they connected even deeper through music they played and helped each other heal. I wish only that there had been more of his own poems, because they were really good and touching. But all of this wouldn't really matter if there wasn't for the writing style of the author which I consider really good. I would have given the book 5 stars if there weren't some cheesy lines and the ending which was kind of abrupt and I felt that some things where left undone, especially after everything that happened towards the end. Highly recommend it to every masochist reader out there.
“I’m no angel,” I
say, lifting up on one elbow and pushing him onto his back. “And you do deserve me. You deserve someone better than—”
“I deserve exactly you,” he cuts in, settling his hands on my hips as I kneel astride his thighs. “Only you. The good and the bad. All you, all beautiful.”
*** The 2nd book in the series is expected to be published in July 2013. It's called Falling Into Us (Falling, #2) and it focuses on characters who appear shortly in the 1st book: Becca, Nell's best friend and Jason. How to resist a book with such a gorgeous cover and intriguing synopsis? I know I wont.
"Becca de Rosa is Nell’s best friend. When Kyle died, Nell was so devastated that no one could reach her, not even her best friend Becca. As she tries to help Nell through her grief, Becca’s own life is thrust into turmoil, and everything she knows is changed.
Jason Dorsey asked Nell out the week after her sixteenth birthday, but that date never happened. Instead, he ended up going out with Nell’s best friend, Becca. He had no way of knowing, then, how that one date would send him on a life-long journey with Becca. He had no way of knowing the tragedies and triumphs he would experience, or that in Becca, he might find the love of a lifetime.
THE HEARTACHE YOU’LL NEVER FORGET..."
MY RATING:
XOXO