Ohhhhh.
This book. (fans self)
It starts off with such a bang (literally)
Once you come down off the high of one of the hottest scenes I have read in a looonnnnggg time the story picks up pace and just keeps running all the way to the end.
Brooklyn and Ronan are layered and complex characters in a world that is trying to make them very very flat people. They should both be flawed people that are instantly unlikable without any redeemable qualities or worth, yet, you see from the get go that there is more to each of them that meets the eye.
The layering of the suspense, stalking, and whodunit is also utterly gorgeously written. I'm a mystery/thriller fan, fully raised on Agatha Christie novels and this book had me guessing, solidly landing on a suspect, rethinking myself, coming back to the suspect I liked and then the plot twists. These authors as a writing duo are an utter power house.
I enjoy these author's works on their own, but writing together these women make an phenomenal pair. This book hit all of my wants and needs in a book and all of the things I look for in my seemingly unredeemable unlikable characters and then some.
Here is what worked for me character wise.
Brooklyn is a college aged blonde Gossip Girl like character; or at least that's the role that her social circle and her father have allowed her to play. Even Brooklyn isn't sure what she is capable of or of who she really is. Frankly as a reader I wasn't sure of who or what Brooklyn was capable of either until about 70% of the way through the book. I knew that she has an incredible heart with the capacity to love, forgive and see others for whom they are. She has never been asked what she likes, or what interests her. Ronan begins to be the first person in her life who challenges her in these areas and asks these questions. When she doesn't have ready answers, he is okay with her not knowing. Even her closest best friend doesn't allow her this grace and instead pushes her off as a failure and a ditz. I also liked how Brooklyn's anxiety, her depression and her coping techniques the good, the bad, and the ugly were all portrayed. This is a woman who has been told her entire life she is a worthless pawn on a chess board that she doesn't own, will never own, and could never in her future even perceive to earn a true spot on. In all reality this is a person who should be in one of two places - either deep into addiction and in need of some long time inpatient therapy, or exactly as Brooklyn in portrayed on page. My hats off to the authors for the research, the writing, the grace and the kindness they granted Brooklyn and her character arc. It was brutal. It was truthful. It was raw. It was real. THANK YOU.
Ronan is another character that I swung back and forth on as well. He took longer for me to like. I really wanted to push him off Aspen's balcony a time or 15. His character arc took much longer to play out, but again, these authors held him very very true to his own demons. In true theater tradition they wrote Ronan to character which is why I did wind up loving him so much. Ronan and Brooklyn aren't so different at the base of their origin stories. Both are children who are raised being told by their parents how unworthy of love, time and human compassion they are deemed.
These are humans who are raised behind closed doors being told in every interaction exactly how worthless they are from the minute petty spiteful levels up to the harsh large range vocabulary words that a doctoral level English professional would use. They both also see their parents gaining joy, happiness, and utter fulfillment in taking from others, destroying others, and being as destructive as they possibly can.
Again both Ronan and Brooklyn had a few different ways these upbringings and model behaviors could have swung them. Brooklyn self withdraws and has other self based behaviors that she turns to.
Ronan turns outward, which is the more standard of behaviors we see in society. Using his anger, rage, and ruthless intellect, he begins his early adult life mimicking his father. Ronan however soon learns the lesson that - empty doesn't fill empty. Where his father never grows beyond the petty and the spite, Ronan slowly begins to grow into self actualization and changes his ways of doing business and treating the greater world. That is about the point in his character story that this book begins at.
Then the master use of the suspense and the mystery of who would want to so brutally and horrifically destroy not only Ronan, but Brooklyn as well, swells and builds around this. I'm very thrilled, delighted, ecstatic and the rest of the thesaurus that these authors held fast to this line of their story and didn't let it waver, didn't let it fizzle and indeed made it as strong as the romance they were writing.
These women have written such a strong suspense with their romance that it is a jewel. They then turned it and used it brilliantly in both of their main characters' arcs and used it in such a well crafted way to bring about rock bottoms, grovels, forgiveness. I could only wish that my mind might turn out something so.....devious, simple, twisty and yet - something I never expected was coming. SO well done.
These things added in with the side characters and a world frothing with other people you shouldn't want to like but now I'm curious about and I'm hooked like the romance junkie that I am.
I want and need more.
Luckily for me, the authors have noted at the end of this novel that they will be writing a second stand alone in this world.
I have that noted on my TBR as - addicted romance junkie.
Well done ladies. So well done!