Double Review: Never Tear Us Apart / Never Let You Go by Monica Murphy

Monica Murphy dropped two novels in 2016 with her new adult series Never Tear Us Apart.  The first book is titled the same of the series, and is followed by Never Let You Go.  It is a dark, gripping tale of two young adults struggling to find themselves -- and love -- in the wake of a devastating tragedy.

Never Tear Us Apart - Book 1
Perfect for readers of Colleen Hoover, Jay Crownover, and K. A. Tucker, the first novel in this darkly sexy contemporary series from bestselling author Monica Murphy kicks off an emotionally powerful two-part tale of forbidden love.

A long time ago, when I was fifteen and a completely different person, I saved a girl’s life. I spent only a handful of hours with her, but somehow, we connected—and I’ve never been the same. No one understands what we went through. No one knows what it’s like to be us. We survived, yet I don’t feel like I’m really living—until now. Eight years later, I find her. I want to make her mine. I need to make her mine.  But she’ll hate me forever when she finds out who I really am.
@Goodreads - @Amazon


Never Let You Go - Book 2
The second novel in this darkly sexy contemporary series from bestselling author Monica Murphy wraps up an emotionally powerful two-part tale of forbidden love.

The truth hurts, they say—and my pain cuts deep. While I was falling for Ethan, he was deceiving me the entire time. He held a huge secret, protected by his lies. When I discovered what he was hiding, the truth shook my world, threatening to ruin us forever. Ruin me. But I soon realized that what we share can’t be destroyed.

The connection between us is too strong. It always has been. I can’t deny him any longer. And I can’t deny my truth: I’m in love with Ethan.

I don’t want to let him go.

While we’re trying our best to make this relationship work, other forces are fighting against us. My family, who wants to keep me safe. The media obsessed with my tragic past. The public that feeds off of it. Even Ethan’s father—the man who nearly destroyed me all those years ago. He’s doing his best to finish the job.

Despite my love for Ethan, the doubts creep in, clouding my mind. Is he worth the pain? Will our love survive, or will we have no choice but to end it—end us—once and for all?
@Goodreads - @Amazon

This is the story of a twelve year old girl that was kidnapped from a local amusement park by a man that brutally raped and tortured her for three days, and the fifteen year old boy that saved her... the kidnapper's very own son.  Told in the dual perspective of Katie and Will (now Ethan), both past and present, Never Tear Us Apart is a strong beginning to the series.

Eight years after the highly publicized kidnapping, torture, and rape of Katie, Ethan finds the girl he saved.  The girl he rescued from his monster of a father who also abused him throughout his life both and physically and emotionally.  The man that was a confirmed killer of two other teenage girls he also abducted and raped.

Katie is a shell of a person; utterly destroyed, and believable as a victim of something no living creature should ever have to endure. Scared, but desperate to get her life back, she finds herself at the amusement park where she was abducted eight years prior, where she meets Ethan. She then forms a bond with him that she has never had with another man, understandably.

But she does not know that he is the boy that saved her.

Overall, four stars.  Fast-paced, believable, dark enough to interest my even my incredibly black soul, and most importantly, the two characters had their own unique voices.  The end was a bit... clean and tidy (too much for my taste), but overall, a very decent read.

Never Let You Go picks up where Never Tear Us Apart left off.  Still told in the dual perspective of both Katie and Ethan/Will, and still with flashbacks to the incident 8 years ago.  Except this time, the flashbacks add nothing; the story was already told.  In fact, there's issues with the flashbacks; in the first novel, Katie stopped talking to Will after the incident because her mother insisted on it, but in the second novel, Will was the one to cut ties with Katie.  So I guess the flashbacks did provide something -- plot holes.

The second novel, although readable, simply dragged.  The ending was bad, Will annoyed me so much I started thinking he was a slight creeper (not great to think when reading a romance novel).  In my opinion, this entire novel could have been summed up in a few chapters and added to the end of Never Let You Go, which should have been a standalone.  Two stars.

 

(Combined rating of both books in the Never Tear Us Apart series)

Review: It Ends With Us by Colleen Hoover

Uh-oh; Colleen Hoover (lovingly known by the blogging community as simply 'CoHo') has a new novel out that guarantees to make you cry and be depressed and think about things you normally wouldn't... like every other Colleen Hoover book.  Worst book introduction ever? Maybe. But this is CoHo, guys; you know what to expect.

Lily hasn’t always had it easy, but that’s never stopped her from working hard for the life she wants. She’s come a long way from the small town in Maine where she grew up—she graduated from college, moved to Boston, and started her own business. So when she feels a spark with a gorgeous neurosurgeon named Ryle Kincaid, everything in Lily’s life suddenly seems almost too good to be true.

Ryle is assertive, stubborn, maybe even a little arrogant. He’s also sensitive, brilliant, and has a total soft spot for Lily. And the way he looks in scrubs certainly doesn’t hurt. Lily can’t get him out of her head. But Ryle’s complete aversion to relationships is disturbing. Even as Lily finds herself becoming the exception to his “no dating” rule, she can’t help but wonder what made him that way in the first place.

As questions about her new relationship overwhelm her, so do thoughts of Atlas Corrigan—her first love and a link to the past she left behind. He was her kindred spirit, her protector. When Atlas suddenly reappears, everything Lily has built with Ryle is threatened.

@ Goodreads - @ Amazon

The good:  Colleen Hoover, y'all! (Note: this is the first time in my life I've ever even thought the word 'y'all', let alone used it in a sentence)
The bad:  Insta-love, love triangle :(

This one is hard for me to review for two pretty significant reasons:

1. Colleen Hoover, y'all! (Make that number two; I'm on a roll here)  Honestly, I feel that if anyone other than CoHo wrote this, I would have given it a higher rating.  So please, keep that in mind. 
2. I can't really say much about the novel without giving the entire thing away.  Unfortunately, the "reveal" (which comes at approximately halfway through the book), is the entire book.  

Every review I read on Goodreads was gushing with praise, and of course, completely lacking in detail.  If I had zero problems with the novel, my review would undoubtedly follow suit.  Unfortunately, I had some problems with it, and in order for me to discuss them, I have to talk about the novel a little bit.

BEWARE: Major Spoilers!

Review: Never Never (Never Never #1) by Colleen Hoover and Tarryn Fisher

Never Never is the first novella in a new collab series by the extremely popular Colleen Hoover and Tarryn Fisher.

Best friends since they could walk.

 In love since the age of fourteen.

Complete strangers since this morning.

He'll do anything to remember. She'll do anything to forget.




@Goodreads - @Amazon

This novel is told in the dual perspective of the two main characters, both of whom lost their memory at the same exact time without suffering any kind of injury or illness.  They just "woke up" one day at school, not knowing a single detail about themselves, such as where they lived, what their names are, or anything at all relevant to themselves.  But they remember all the latest technology and can use it efficiently.

As I type this out, I find myself thinking that the three-star rating I gave this novella is a bit generous.  It's a bit... far-fetched.   To put it mildly.

 Instead of telling a family member or, I don't know, a DOCTOR, about their memory loss, they instead do absolutely nothing, looking to each other to try to fill in the gaps about their lives. As this happens, Silas, the boyfriend, starts falling in love with Charlie all over again, who was cheating on him before the memory loss incident took place. Oh, but he was cheating on her, too, with the school guidance counselor. Two assholes. Now, two assholes with no memories. There is a twist at the end that interested me, but frankly made no sense at all, followed up a cliffhanger ending that answers almost nothing. So why the three stars?  Despite its flaws (the central one being the completely unexplained medical mystery memory loss, which is... pretty significant), it was a fast read.  I gobbled it up, and when I finished, I wanted more.   So what if it is the novella equivalent of a crappy daytime soap opera.  I liked it, despite... everything.  Somehow.

Publication Date: January 7, 2015

Review: Maybe Someday by Colleen Hoover

Although I am typically not a fan of the new adult genre (no real reason -- my old ass just can't relate), I had read Hopeless by Colleen Hoover, and loved the last half of it.  Maybe Someday wasn't a bad read at all -- in fact, I quite enjoyed it -- but I had some major problems with the plot and characters.

At twenty-two years old, aspiring musician Sydney Blake has a great life: She’s in college, working a steady job, in love with her wonderful boyfriend, Hunter, and rooming with her good friend, Tori. But everything changes when she discovers Hunter cheating on her with Tori—and she is left trying to decide what to do next.

Sydney becomes captivated by her mysterious neighbor, Ridge Lawson. She can’t take her eyes off him or stop listening to the daily guitar playing he does out on his balcony. She can feel the harmony and vibrations in his music. And there’s something about Sydney that Ridge can’t ignore, either: He seems to have finally found his muse. When their inevitable encounter happens, they soon find themselves needing each other in more ways than one…

@Goodreads

The novel opens right after Sydney finds out that her boyfriend has been cheating on her with her longtime friend and roommate, courtesy of the hot guy she's been watching play guitar from her balcony in the evenings.   She quickly moves in with said hot guitar playing stud and his roommates, because she has nowhere else to go.  (I'm pretty sure I wouldn't move in with strangers under any circumstance, but whatever, I just went with it.)  Ridge is the hot musician, and shock of the century!, he's deaf.  He strikes a deal with Sydney to write lyrics for his band in exchange for free rent, and an attraction quickly blooms.

Then we find out Ridge has a girlfriend already.

Now, I know what you're thinking -- Ridge sounds like a piece of shit.  That's what I thought, too.  But, in Ridge's defense, adultery does happen, and it doesn't necessarily make a person a piece of shit.  At least that's what I tell myself.  Personal story time!: I cheated on, and then immediately left my first husband for my current husband.  My first husband wasn't a perfect guy, though, hardly;  without going into any details, we'll just say that he didn't treat me very well.  I didn't set out to cheat on him, it's just something that happened, and I owned up to it immediately, and that's that.  It was an extremely difficult time for me, and very hard for me to handle in every way imaginable, and keep in mind, my ex-husband wasn't the best.

Ridge's girlfriend in Maybe Someday is pretty much perfect.  Sweet, beautiful, kind, friendly, you name a positive adjective, and she fits it to a tee.

So therein lies the problem. While I enjoyed the romance that developed between Ridge and Sydney, I couldn't stop myself from thinking that Ridge is just a jerk.

I have some very specific reasons that I did not agree with Ridge's decisions... SPOILER ALERT!  Don't read ahead if you are interested in reading this novel for yourself and haven't yet.

Rave: Hopeless by Colleen Hoover FREE for Amazon Kindle!

Today only -- download Hopeless by Colleen Hoover in Kindle format for free on Amazon.  Click here to download NOW!

My review, as published on Goodreads last year, before the birth of my blog:

I'm not going to lie here; the first third of the novel was an eyeroll fest. Pretty much everything having to do with the main character's introduction to high school was just one adolescent cliché after another. I graduated from high school thirteen years ago, however, so I'll chalk my opinion up to the fact that I am old and jaded now. Still, to me, the novel was very forced at first.

Why did I keep reading, you ask?

In short: I had it, I was broke and didn't want to buy anything else, and have you seen the reviews?!

This book is considered part of a genre that I think was just created (again, I'm old), called New Adult. It's basically Young Adult fiction with more sex. As much as I ended up loving this book, I don't think I will revisit the genre anytime soon unless Colleen Hoover is the author.

The last half of this book was just... wow. Powerful. Amazing. Uplifting. I couldn't put it down. The less you know, the better, so I will just say that I highly recommend it to everyone that likes a good romance, and if you think the beginning is a bit cheesy, well... stick it out.

Check out this title @Goodreads.
Don't wait to download this -- offer is good TODAY only!

Rave and Review: Unravel by Calia Read

Amazing -- everyone needs to read this new adult psychological thriller by Calia Read. Not a fan of the genre? Don't despair, I didn't think I was, either.

Six months ago, I was happy. I was simply Naomi Carradine.

One month ago, I was admitted into a psych ward.

Yesterday, Lachlan visited me. Kissed me. And told me that I’m starting to lose my mind.

Hours later, Max haunted my thoughts, reminding me I’m not crazy and that he needs my help.

A few minutes ago, I drifted further from reality, trying to unravel the past.

And now...everyone thinks I’m insane. But, I know he's real, and I know he needs me.

Do you believe me?           @Goodreads     @Amazon

Mind fuckery galore.

Usually when I read a psychological thriller, I am disappointed in the ending. If it’s especially fast-paced throughout, the ending is even more underwhelming for me. I also generally do not like new adult novels, although I’ve only read very few. So I started Unravel with low expectations, and was hooked very quickly. It was new adult that wasn’t corny and cliché. A psychological thriller that had me guessing until the very end, and even though I had my suspicions, I was completely satisfied with the outcome.

I am afraid to say too much about this novel, so as not to give anything away.  At the same time, I'm reeling, and I want to talk about it to someone, anyone.

 Prediction: Love it or hate it, I predict that you will not be able to put it down.

Warning: This novel does contain a vivid rape scene early on, and may not be appropriate for everyone. 

Published February 15th 2014