Four Crows

We were two people on opposite sides of a line that had no way of intermingling. Victim versus monster. Good versus evil. A man desperate to reveal truth versus a woman who knew that truth but had chosen to remain silent.

Elliot McLoughlin, 34 years old, his life changed fourteen years ago in most horrible manner, when he lost his reasons of living. He’d fallen in love at the age of thirteen, had a child at fifteen, and enlisted in the military at eighteen just to support the family I had when I was too young to take care of it. During his deployment, Elliot found out that his family was gone It was during my first tour that Katelyn and Michael went missing. As soon as I received word of their disappearance, I’d lost my mind. The military discharged me a few months later because I was a danger to myself and any soldier who fought beside me.

Not being able to cope with the not knowing what actually happened with his family has made Elliot a damaged, broken man making him more than determined to find out the truth and hold the ones responsible, hunting them down, killing them, without any sense of compassion.
Every day has me inching closer to the line that separates a good man from the monster I’m becoming. And you’ll just have to forgive me, Darlin’, for all the messed up and unforgivable things I’m about to do.

Maggie Crow, 18 years, has had a quite unusual and unorthodox upbringing. At the age of four she knows that the things happening at her father and two brothers parties are not normal but she was taught that it’s best not to asked what goes on behind those closed doors, best to let the music drown out the screams. I ignored the loud music they always played when there was company. With loud guitars and pounding drums, the music was sometimes happy and a lot of times mad.
When Maggie starts to understand what her family does she felt utterly powerless to change anything.

She was one of them, through and through. A Crow by birth – and now, a Crow by choice.

When Elliot meets Maggie through a trick, it doesn’t take her too long to figure out who he is. But what she does not realize is that he already knows who she is and what her family did all those years ago to his wife and son. Lies, fear and vengeance bring Elliot and Maggie together. Maggie, looking to escape the horrors of her life and Elliot looking for answers he craved and needed to move on. But what neither of them ever expected to find was a need for each other.

“Through her eyes I saw myself more clearly. And through her heart I’d learned to live again.”

Reading the blurb made me instantly curious and, as anticipated, it was a heart wrenching and gripping read. Lilly White did an amazing job conveying Elliot’s pain.
Four Crows is dark, it is full of horror, tragedies and despair and told in alternating POV’s. This book touches subjects that I found very disturbing and made my skin crawl, but nonetheless, it is an enthralling story. One that I highly recommend.

Review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1982723275

4.5 Thrilling Stars

Revenge-to avenge (oneself or another) usually by retaliating in kind or degree…And that my friends is what Elliott strives to accomplish. Returning early from serving time in the military, Elliot is faced with a missing wife and child. No longer any good serving his country to provide for his wife and child, he was discharged. Now we follow him as he seeks to make and and all suffer for what has happened to his family. After 14 years, has a clue finally become a reality in finding out who did this to his family?

At 4 yrs. old, a picture Maggie drew, would pave the road for how her live would go on… Red rain…Rubies…. They Sparkle… Now at 18, Maggie is at a crossroad. Living the life always moving, never having any friends that stayed for long, never going to school just her Dad and two brothers. A Dad that truly loves her and will do whatever to protect his baby girl. Brothers who would do anything to damage their sister. This is what makes up the Crow Family. Or, turning around now and putting trust into this stranger she just met. One who has managed to bring out new and different feelings. Feelings that Maggie has never felt.

Family is a strong word. One that means the world to both Elliot and Maggie. Are they willing to step over the line to help each other overcome what has happened in their family life? What these two have been through are horrible events that span across the entire rainbow of unhappiness. This is an emotional read and pretty detailed in some of the events that if you have Triggers, please be forewarned.

It’s a great page-turner that I enjoyed reading.

Four Crows is a powerful emotional read that will mess with you sense of right & wrong.

The Male Crow family members are pure evil through & through but a strong writer has the skills to mess with your mind and although evil is seen a ray of light and forgiveness shone through for one member which I have questioned myself about.

Maggie Crow is trapped in a small world, she has everything she needs and is worshipped by her family not always in the best ways.

Elliott is a broken shell of a man seeking revenge at any cost and nothing and no one will stand in his path to reach those who stole from him.

But can anything pure come out from all this evil ?…. Four Crows made me smile, cringe at the level of violence (but also made me smile) cry ugly tears, laugh but not much and showed me the horrors that are leaking among us all

The death of a beloved in comparison; is an amputation to the soul. The loss in itself is devastating, but knowing that your family has perished at the hands of monsters is an agony no one should have to experience. The unknown of such horrific details and unspoken truth is often bliss when the knowledge can be so frightening.

~the thieves in the night – the monsters that fed on the fragilities and vulnerabilities of those who they considered weaker than themselves.

Elliot has had the misfortune to encounter such a vile and heartbreaking event while away at war. Upon return, desperate for retribution, he would go to any length to extract revenge. How far can a person be pushed before they become the monsters that they hunt? Elliot skirts that gamut multiple times throughout the story. His anguish seizes the reader and they mourn his loss and desperation together.

Maggie, an innocent and seclusive young woman has grown up living with her unsophisticated hillbilly father and brothers, isolated from society. She loves her father; to her he is the one man that would never hurt her. He was the king who made her feel like a princess in their world. She is aware of the horrible, abhorrent things that they do, but elects to evade the undesirable truth. Many times throughout the story the reader will detest her and loathe her choices and conduct.

Red Rain. It was a memory that relentlessly stalked me through my short life, the terrifying yet beautiful sparkle of rubies wetting the grass in my mind each time I allowed myself to think back.

Lily White has such an eloquent way of telling a story. Her words expressively provide the paint and our minds paint the picture. It is so graphic that it is effortless to visualize each and every scene that you read. The composite voyage of Four Crows is superbly executed and counterbalances between light and darkness, hope and despair, death and survival. Lily is truly a monarch of unconventional, censured literary greatness.

5
Complicated was too simple a word for the position in which I found myself. Dangerous was more like it… or disastrous.
And that about sums up the story. There’s a Sense of Dread that runs central in the story. Maggie is the Fourth Crow in the Family of Four Crows. As black and as ominous as the real crows, the Crows move from town to town just before a storm, but they leave a trail of destruction in their wake. Only their’s are silent, the crime scenes wiped clean, footprints burnt to the ground and no clues left behind that could incriminate them.
But there are indelible marks on Maggie’s life. She lives under the constant threat of evil, sick brothers-Brody & Finn. They’re predators hiding in the shadowed sidelines, standing outside her doors in the inky darkness. Just waiting for Jonah Crow to die and leave Maggie unprotected, so they could inevitably step in…
And then there’s a parallel story of Elliott McLoughlin. He’s a man destroyed. And with nothing to loose any more, he’s a dangerous hunter and tracker of his family’s murderers. You see , while Elliott was off fighting for his country, somebody had robbed him off his beautiful wife , Katie and a young son , Michael. His heart died the same day.
I was damaged. I was broken. I had nothing left to lose, which made me the most dangerous type of man. I lacked fear. I lacked morality. I lacked every decent thing inside myself that made me care about consequences. Nothing mattered. And because of that, it made me the perfect predator too.The pain is unbearable. It’s never ending. And over the years that I’ve endured the agony, it’s developed into something far darker, far more deadly, than anything I knew could exist inside me.
He’s just a walking-talking , empty shell of a man , left breathing because his enemies breathe…still.
And one man’s pain leads to another person’s agony.
Elliott meets Maggie and a tiny shred of human decency tries to rear it’s head, which Elliott quashes with all his might. His mission of life needs no interruptions by any distraction or sympathy of any kind
I’m a rabid dog off his leash, a hungry tiger uncaged, a feral wolf that’s been injured and abused, only to be set free. Without you to hold the leash, I’ve become focused and intent on destroying everything in my path.
Maggie despises and is terrified of her brothers but she totally loves her father. He’s loved her and nurtured her into this beautiful young girl, shielded her from all evils, spent time with her laughing and playing and hugging and smiling.
For as evil as Jonah was , he still cherished me, his only daughter.I loved him. More than anything I’d known in life, I loved my father. He wasn’t the nicest man to most of the people who’d known him. He wasn’t the best example of what a father should be. But he had been my world for so long, I was afraid to find out what life would be without him. When all you have is the worst of the lot, the worst becomes your normal because it’s all you’ve ever known.
The coupling of Maggie-Elliott is a complicated relationship, yet very simple to understand. They are each other lean-to’s. They have a common vein of empathy in them , so no need for words or explanantions. They are very familiar with the pain each has endured at the hands of the Crows.
I’ve shuddered through the entire story. The Goosebumps factor climbed a high 100 !
The plot is chilling in anticipation and equally horrendous in execution. The methods lily conjures up to expose the heinousness of diseased inhumanity , boggles my mind.
I’m scared to draw any resemblance to anything living or dead, coincidental or unintentional. The references to certain barbarisms in the book make my hair stand on end. They’re DEFINITELY TRIGGERS for sensitive readers.
As usual I can’t escape the brilliant writing in shocking cruel story.
Read at your own risk, because you’ll definitely have vigorous heart pounding palpitations, a bad case of cursingitis (I totally made that up . Cursing loudly) and may end up crying at a scene or two.
I just wonder though – her writing and us reading such stories, does it make us cynical at times?
I thought that there was more internal monologue towards the end but that actually went well with the darkness of the oncoming war of sorts, and carried the mood of the story. Light bantering or mindless chatter would have diluted the dark, intense mood of the story and Lily is very adept at not letting go of the characteristics and settings of the story , in the sense that her characters remain purest form of evil and venomous . The villains a rarely show compassion and don’t spout useless repentant speeches, nor do they turnabout on a dime to seek redemption
No, she’s unapologetic about her work and though her stories are clearly defined and sat ensconced in Dark black side ( no shade of grey here!) We accept it whole heartedly because she delivers what she promises !

I received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review for Stephanie’s Book Reports.

Maggie Crow has been born into a family that nightmares are made of. Her father and brothers though protect her like crazy. Maggie loves them all but she fears them. Especially when she learns what they are really up to.

Elliot McLaughlin joined the U.S. Marines right after high school to support his wife and son. He never expected to have a family so soon but they were his world. He would do whatever it took to give them everything they needed. When his family goes missing he returns home from war obsessed with finding out who took his wife and son. He’s a man out for revenge.

Passion bring Elliott and Emily together. Obsession pushes them apart. A bitter battle between the Crow’s and Elliott leave Maggie’s heart hanging in the balance.

Four Crows does have some dark elements to it so I want you to be aware of that before you read the book. This was my first Lily White book. I have to say I was so excited about it because I love dark books. There just about my favorite thing to read. With that said I didn’t find it as dark as I expected it to be. I did find myself in he edge of my seat at times about to freak out over what was happening at the time in the book. Heart pounding no no no stuff. But not the dark so much. I loved Elliott and my heart broke for him several times. He’s a genuinely good guy and his world was stolen from him by the most evil people on the planet. Maggie is right in the middle of that evil and was actually raised with it going on right under her nose. Her father doted on her. No doubt in his twisted mind he loved Maggie and wanted to protect her from the evil in the world. Maggie for her part though at times really drove me crazy. Her decisions drove me batty and I found myself saying why would you do that several times. She’s a redeemable character though and that I really liked. I went into this book expecting the darkest thing I’ve ever read and while it’s not the darkest it’s a great story. A second chance or enemies to lovers romance I would say.

Four Crows will have you on the edge of your seat. Leave you breathless at times. Restore your faith in a hope and love. It’s defiantly worth the read. I will defiantly be reading more of Lily White’s books