Intense and heart breaking. The story was written so well that it felt as if I was the one that had experienced everything the characters where going thru.

I received a free copy of this novel courtesy of Gloss Publishing LLC via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

This book was… complicated. And so are my feelings towards it.

For one, I honestly cannot remember for the life of me the majority of the plot… and it hasn’t even been remotely long since I’ve read it – which does bring up a few red flags in my mind already and deeper thought about the novel hadn’t even commenced.

The characters made this book difficult to read. Not because they were badly written, but honestly their character traits were far from favourable and I did come to the conclusion that I indeed pretty much hated Houston, and only felt bad for Rory because of her experiences and not because I genuinely cared about her. Houston was the typical douchebag of NA romances… full of himself, with some deeply-set issues (much unexplained) that he clearly wasn’t ready to let go of in order to get his shit together and treat the woman that really loved him right. I honestly had so many other issues with his character I could possibly write my own novel about them, but a lot of them would involve spoiling bits of the story and that isn’t the purpose of a review.

And Rory, well there was nothing particularly wrong with Rory as a person, just I found myself not caring about her as much as I possibly should have. I did think, however, that at points it would have been quite nice if she grew up a little and gotten her act together – and perhaps gotten over Houston. But at no point did that happen.

And so the book was a giant rollercoaster of their relationship and its ups and downs – although if we’re being honest, largely the down as there were only brief intermittent happy scenes scattered through the novel.

Their romance wasn’t developed enough, we really aren’t given much back story other than the whole “they got together as kids” thing – and even then that fact is glossed over so quickly my head was left spinning at the speed.

However, I did like the pacing and Leo’s writing style made the book quite a manageable reading experience. It wasn’t too long, nor too short – it felt just right (I feel like Goldilocks 2.0 after saying that) which helped it not to fall down into a 10-foot deep hole with no point of return.

Also, I quite liked the intensity of everything that was happening within the story. It was almost as though every single emotion that the characters were feeling was ramped up and amplified at least thrice, and I think that worked really well in the context of the story and conveyed the angst-filled, on-off relationship pretty well.

Furthermore, the supporting characters? Solid A grade effort for those – I actually have to say I preferred them to the protagonists and cared for them more too… which may not have been the point of the book??

The cliffhanger end killed me inside, though… it wasn’t a pleasing one and it left me largely disgruntled. To the point where I am willing to read the next book to see if the situation is resolved at all, or if I will continue to be as annoyed with the story as I was.

However, I do have to say that a lot of the problems that I came across whilst reading this novel were probably of my own making and I do realise that others may not experience the same problems and so definitely do encourage others to read it.

My Rating: 2.25/5 Stars