Harper Sloan is a warrior. She’s survived the childhood from hell and clawed her way out on her own. But no amount of life experience could have prepared her for the heartache Colton would bring. He was the best man she’d ever dated, until he shattered that flawless image with his unthinkable deception. Colton is a liar, but so is Harper. And now her own secrets may have deadly consequences. FBI … FBI agent Colton Brady made a choice. He faked his death, going undercover to save his best friend’s life from a serial killer, but it cost him the woman he loves. When he learns Harper is involved with a dangerous loan shark, he forces his way back into her life. Harper may hate him, but there is no line Colton won’t cross to protect her.
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I seem to have read a completely different version of this book than everyone else or something. This book received super high ratings and I’m a little shocked by how much I just didn’t get and/or like this book.
One of the first things that I noticed was the fact that there was more talking about conversations than the characters actually having them. Basically what would happen is the characters would think about half of the conversation in an inner dialogue and then finish the conversation in a … you guessed it … actual conversation. It was very strange. I found that I wasn’t getting to know the characters as much as I wanted to because about half of the time, you never got to experience them interacting with anyone else. Because of all of this, the book reads more like a monologue.
The timeline in the book is also muddied beyond recognition. I have absolutely no clue how long it was between some of the scenes. It’s insinuated that a long time has passed in some of the inner dialogues but it isn’t always stated. It’s difficult to get your bearings in a book when you feel like you’re caught in a vortex of timeless space where no one talks to each other, they just think about it.
There were about 75 zillion characters that you have to keep up with. Unfortunately, they kind of just meld together after a little while. That’s not good. All of the male characters seemed to be exactly the same, they just had different names and different women that they hovered around. Maybe it feels this way because there were 10 different stories going on at once and you were never able to fully invest into any of the story because there was so much going on.
I’m not sure if there is a book that preceded this or what. I felt like I never fully understood why certain things were happening in the book or why characters were behaving the way that they were. In addition to so many things going on, there was tons of shit that was completely omitted. The characters would be at the beginning of a situation and then it would just skip over what happened and then the characters would vaguely touch on it later. HEY!! I want to read that shit! It’s the entire reason I picked this book up – to read about this story that the blurb on the back of the book hinted at. I don’t want stuff skipped over.
The only reason this book got two stars from me is because there were hints of a good story in there. I liked the bones of the book but there was too much going on, too many characters that were too similar, main characters I barely knew, a ridiculously vague timeline and too much skipped over. If it weren’t for that and a few more things, I would have liked this book. Not for me but there are a ton of people who just loved this. I don’t understand what they saw that I didn’t but I’m glad that they had a better reading experience than I did.
* I received this novel in exchange for an honest review *