Once, they shared one soul. Can hope heal years of despair and broken dreams?Music is all I know. It saved me as a kid. It brings me fame and fortune now. But what am I, the famous Gage Rodin, doing at night when I’m on the road and can’t sleep Googling her. Tess Hades, the girl who still haunts my dreams and my lyrics. She arrived like a quiet storm, a wild thing with eyes guarded to the world. … a wild thing with eyes guarded to the world. But she let me into the deep end of her beautifully broken soul. When we were together, life was simple. When my life got complicated, she did what she thought was the right thing. She let me go.
While she’s been out saving the wild creatures of the world, my muse has fed on the memory of our life together. But now everything in my world is shifting again, and not in a good way. I’m not certain I have the strength to bear another devastating loss, so I find myself reaching for something as rare and elusive as the perfect song lyric.
The one woman who never gave up hope…
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My One Despair is an epic story that will bleed your heart, fill it up and let it soar.
I’m going to start off by stating that I was on fence with my rating so let me explain. The past three or four books I’ve read by Burgoa had drowned me with emotions. I’m talking ugly cry, heart beating explosions, all the feels. So when I finished My One Despair and didn’t feel all consumed, I was torn. I took some time to really digest it and once I did, I realized that I was utterly consumed but not so highly emotional. Everyone in this book snuck up on me and resonated so quietly that if I hadn’t taken the time to process it, I would have missed it. And you know what, I respect the hell out of Burgoa for doing that to me. I felt it was important to tell you that before the rest of my review.
While this book can be read as a standalone, we do meet Tess in another book. If you’ve read that book, you’ve probably got very strong opinions about her so I’m sure a lot of you will be hesitant about how her story will end. For me, I personally love redemption stories. I love when author’s brings back characters that I at one point wanted to choke out because 90% of the time, they redeem themselves quite well and Tess is one of those people. Plus I have to remind myself that she was a kid when we were first introduced to her.
Being the daughter of a famous rocker has it perks but it certainly has it downfalls. You never know people’s true intentions when you come from a famous family. Therefore, Tess has always been careful. She’s set goals for herself and has dreams that she will make happen. When she meets Gage, she knows she should stay away but it’s impossible. Knowing that her heart could be shattered, she opened up anyway.
The begin this epic romance that you can’t help but fall in love with but of course, life has a way of getting in the way and ultimately Tess and Gage split up. Even after six years, their love still hasn’t faded. Now that they are semi back in each other’s lives, it’s to be determined if they can ever work again.
What I liked about this was how strong Tess was and went after her goals. Both loved each other fierce and both would do anything for the other. Even if it means sacrificing themselves. Wrapped up with a surprising twist, their story is angsty, heartfelt and honest. Without giving anything away, that twist and the story behind it is the reason I believe that I finally figured out just how consumed I was, even though I wasn’t a blubbering mess.
You don’t want to miss out on this story. Plus, anyone would die for the lyrics that Gage writes about Tess. Trust me, you want to be attached to these guys.
Five compelling, intense and romantic stars! A poignant, emotional and beautiful story…
Sweet baby Jesus I’m NEVER going to be tired of reading Claudia Burgoa’s books in my life no matter if every time I read them, they left me with a BIG book hangover! She is a wonderful and talented lady that gives to ANGST and ROUGH ROMANCE another meaning and she takes them to another level. Her writing is poetically flawless and beautifully emotional. Her books have the power to leave you speechless and breathless. Each of her masterpieces is a thrilling journey where you will experience a roll coaster of emotions.
My one Despair is the kind of book that will leave readers in a dreamy state of happiness and sweet, fierce bliss. This time Claudia delivered a strong friends-to-lovers romance with a devastating touch of second chance romance. That’s an extraordinary and dangerous combination. My heart pounded fast in my chest while I devoured each chapter. My mind was in a state of trance causing that I completely forget the world around me. My soul was on fire and it craved more and more. It was impossible for me to put this book down. I didn’t want to finish this book because romances like this warmed my heart and made me believe in second chances and to never lose hope because we are humans and forgiveness and love are a part of us.
In my opinion this book was delivered as a quite summer storm. It will make you feel like you are dancing under the soft and warm rain. It guarded a ton of feelings and the story told in its pages is a wild and broken trip of discovering and strong emotions. The plot is smooth and poetic. The pace is fast and each chapter is an unpredictable miracle of life. The storyline unfolds smoothly like rose petals. The characters are beautifully broken and complex. Their souls recognized each other the first time they met. Tess and Cage’s story is an all-consuming, modern fairy tale. Music is around them. It saved and condemned them at the same time.
Tess has a broken soul. Gage is a fixer. They are a match made in heaven. They are dangerous and good for each other. The attraction between them is sizzling hot. They are like the moon and the sun, chasing each other unaware of the beautiful feeling that was growing cautiously in their hearts. The closer they got to each other, the more they craved. Like a sweet and tempting symphony, their souls were drawn to each other beyond comprehension. They are perfect for each other. Fate sealed their path but life, like the spoiled child it is, will push them away in order to prove how strong they are.
Cage is sexy AF! He is imperfectly perfect, and he is swoon worthy ladies! His soul is compassionate and loyal. Music saved him. It gave him the force to chase his dreams. He has a strong complex of “knight in shining armour”. He is intense and dangerous in a sweet kind of way. In his lyrics he will pour his soul. In his love his heart will be consumed. In his life he will fight and protect his loved ones. His world will turn upside and down when a girl with soft and guarded eyes storms into his life. Tess will be his new dream and like an addict he will chase her because her touches lighten his skin and her eyes hypnotized his soul. She was like an angel sent to save him and nourish his dreams. Tess will hunt him. She will become his new addiction and he will do anything to have her and claim her but life will have a bittersweet plan for them.
Tess is on the top of my favourite heroines. Her broken and beautiful soul made her a survivor. She is a fighter in spite of her dark past. She was used and bullied by the person who should have protected her. She has some issues in the trust department and love was a foreign concept for her. Meeting Cage will light her life. She will be skittish and afraid of what a touch of him and a kiss of him will do to her. Cage is different from the boys she dated. What she felt was beyond comprehension. It was not normal. It was consuming and magical because her heart jumped in her chest. He will be her only exception and the more time she spent with him, the more she feared him. She was scared to be consumed and left. To deny the feeling growing between them was impossible and unnatural. He is dangerous for her although it is more dangerous the love that hugged them in a bubble. Will she trust her heart to a man that could break her beyond repair?
Can love survive despair? Would you walk away from your soul mate in order to protect it?
« My One Despair » était tellement hors du commun que je jure que ma bouche était grande ouverte en lisant parce que le déroulement de cette histoire était exceptionnel. Tess et Gage, oh mon Dieu, ces deux-là m’ont brisé le cœur. Sentir un amour comme le leur et le lui enlever, et Tess ne pas savoir ce qui s’est passé et ne pas avoir la fermeture pour passer à autre chose m’ai détruit. Il y a eu des moments où j’ai senti que Claudia essayait de me déchirer le cœur avec les émotions qui jaillissaient dans les pages. Maintenant, il y a une énorme partie que je ne peux ni décrire ni expliquer parce que ça gâcherait tout, mais dans ma tête, je criais, non, euh, pas du tout, vous ne pouvez pas me faire ça !!!! Je jure que je voulais jeter mon kindle ou juste arrêter de lire parce que ça me tuait. En plus de cela, nous en arrivons à la raison pour laquelle tout cela s’est passé et wow, je n’ai rien vu venir et ça est un vrai talent mes amis !
This book took me a bit to get into and once I did WHAM! I was hooked! The emotional ride of this book was everything I love in a book. It offered me a complete and utter escape. The highs and lows in this book were excessively high and low for me and how my heart broke at multiple points and for various reasons.
I really cannot recommend this book enough — it will fill your heart with hope and love
Absolutely one of my favorite books by far. This is Tess and Gage’s story. My heart was an emotional wreck the whole time with these two. I truly could not put down and didn’t want it to end.
Gage and Tess meet when they are both at a cross road of their lives, Gage is finally going to try for his dream and audition solo and Tess is about to move away from her family in order to study. Tess most definitely isn’t looking for love but Gage is drawn to her and willing to wait. Tess thinks after finally opening her heart she has her happily ever after but then the rug is pulled out from under and none of us know what happened just that Gage appears to have lied and broken Tess’s heart. Years later we find neither has fully disengaged from each others live completely and now everything is about to come to a head and after going so much happiness we hold our breath to see if there is a glimmer of a second chance. This is a sweet, heart string pulling, happy and sad story that keeps you hooked on the pages, I do just note this doesn’t have as much angst as some of Claudia’s previous books.
Goodness. Gage and Tess are beautiful together and then it all falls apart. There were years involved by me and the characters. I have no problem admitting that I wanted to beat a character up towards the ending of the book. That character destroyed so much by just thinking about their own happiness.
I liked getting to see a new relationship that still involves the Hades family and I loved getting to hear Tess’ point of view of the actions that happened in My One Regret.
There was so much angst and emotional pain that happened in this book. Poor Tess and Gage are torn apart and we see how they started and get the shock of how they fell apart. I feel that the ending was fast coming which I guess you could make an argument for, but I want more time put into it coming back together.
I received an ARC of this book. This is my honest opinion and review.
Be prepared to have your heart ripped out and then put back again! You will fall in love with Gage and Tess. Of course somewhere in the mess you will hate Gage but in the end you will love him again after you realize just how great he is and everything he has sacrificed to keep Tess safe. Claudia did a great job on this story. I enjoyed it from the beginning to the end.
I absolutely loved this story. When I first met Tess Hades in My One Regret, she was a confused young girl who made some bad choices to please her mother. I wasn’t fond of the character and didn’t know if she was redeemable, but all kids make bad choices, it who they choose to when they grow up that really counts. Tess Hades has grown so much since we last saw her and has turned into this strong woman. When she meets Gage she doesn’t give into her feelings for him because she knows that his career is about to take off and that she could get left behind.
I loved how Gage showed Tess how much he loved her everyday, until the day their world stopped turning. What a twist I never saw coming. This story made me fall in love with these characters and get lost in their world of heartbreak and love. It was a great story with a lot of heart and I hope we get to see more of Tess and Gage. I feel like their story was really just beginning as it ended. Great read!
OMG. This book is so good. This is a story in two parts, he before and the after. Gage and Tess seems like the couple that would never be. Tess because she is convinced everyone is after her because of her famous dad, However Gage knocks her off her feet with his special brand of persuasion. He believes in their love and the chance of happy forever. When the unthinkable happens, unanswered questions swirl and the question of forever seems like a dream.
This book has a cast of characters you can feel familiar with, a few old faces are shown and new ones brought in. Emotional as all of the authors books are, this one rips you apart and puts you back together again.
As always with Claudia Burgoa, you’ll be taken through the mud with one of her stories and this one is no exception. We get to hear the story through both characters eyes and also using past and present story lines.
Tess and Gage are a good match but their relationship definitely took some work. And as the title eludes, My One Despair is filled with angst and heartbreak. Be prepared for a shocker with this one. I was even taken by surprise. This is definitely a page turner and engaging read.
“Love isn’t always sunshine and rainbows. Sometimes it’s a storm. Sometimes it’s watching the person you fell deeply in love with walk away. Love is fighting for what you want in life, for your dreams. When you’re granted a second chance at love, you take it—but love is also granting those second chances.”
Wow, WOW!!! I FLOVED My One Despair. Claudia Burgoa has written two of my favorite books this year—My One Regret and My One Despair—yet, prior to getting my hands on an advanced review copy of My One Regret, I was completely new to Claudia’s work. Yet, I am making up for lost time and I’ve come to the conclusion that she’s immensely talented. From the first book I was able to get my hands on to this last one, Claudia Burgoa has proven herself to be a gifted storyteller by writing intense, heartwarming, compelling books that I just couldn’t put down. I love the way she writes angsty and emotional romance because the more the characters work for their HEA, the more I get invested in the story. And I swear Claudia knows exactly where to twist the plot to send me reeling! The way she writes romance is spectacular. She sucks her readers in with plots that are unique and keep them invested with characters that you can’t help but love.
“Tess might not be mine, but I keep her close to my heart. Tucked into the poetry of my lyrics.”
“My heart was the one in the middle of the road, waiting for her to pick it up—or stomp on it. I was deeply I love with her and every day I fell harder and harder.”
My One Despair is a rockstar romance but it’s less about the music and more about the romance between Gage and Tess. I am a rockstar romance junkie, so its no wonder the book caught my eye. But a trope can only sway you to read it, it can’t consume your thoughts… and that’s exactly what happened to me when I read My One Despair. Tess and Gage’s chemistry is smoking hot and undeniable right from the start. My One Despair is Tessa Hades redemption story. After the events in My One Regret, I wasn’t sure that Tessa was a character that I wanted to see get an HEA. After all, I was so disappointed in her actions and the destruction she caused. But she is the daughter of Kaden Hades (from My One Regret) and I had to believe that she had more of her Dad in her… and less of the dragon that was her mother! Once Claudia was able to address the events from My One Regret directly from Tess’s perspective, I realized just how wrong I was about her. My One Despair is Tess’s second chance… and the romance between Gage and Tess was beautiful. It grew from friendship into more and if this book had never ended, I would have been totally fine with that! Gage is swoon-worthy and although he makes a terrible decision, you can’t help but love him. Then, when all the cards are on the table, I was kicking myself for not seeing the forest for the trees! (And yes, I am being deliberately vague, so I don’t ruin the book for you with spoilers!) My One Despair is written in dual POV and I would be lying if I told you it didn’t gut me a few times. The pain Tess and Gage felt—in turns—was intense and its potency couldn’t have been fully appreciated without reading both characters perspective. Actually, that’s why I love dual POV so much—because it allows the reader to see the characters with more clarity.
“She said I was a dangerous man. and at that moment, when our bodies met, atoms rearranged, and we became one, I realized that our love was dangerous.”
“She wanted to play with fire, and I was willing to burst into flames with her. Our bodies, our hearts, and our souls would be on fire. A fire that I prayed to God would never be extinguished.”
My One Despair had so many things that I loved about it. And while I could go on and on about things that I loved about My One Despair, I need to touch briefly on the one drawback I had with the book. Claudia went to great lengths to develop Tess and Gage—as individuals and a couple—yet suddenly the pair separates, and the book jumps 6 years. This large gap in the timeline made the reading choppy for me. Don’t get me wrong, I couldn’t have put the book down if I tried, but it was abrupt, and the story jumped ahead to Gage and Tess’s reintroduced. This large jump in the timeline made the conclusion of the book feel slightly rushed. That said, I am definitely more critical of books than your average reader and most won’t think anything of it. I certainly don’t want you to miss out reading My One Despair because even with this single problem, I still think this book is a five-star read! I still want you to stop reading reviews and go buy the book. I truly love Claudia Burgoa’s romances, and My One Despair is a truly fantastic read!
Great story about Tess, one I wasn’t sure I’d like but instantly fell in love with!
Tess, oldest daughter of rock star Kaden Hades, and if you read My One Regret, you know what I’m saying. It was great to see a human grown up side to Tess, and to see all her struggles and how strong she’s become! Enter Gage, rock star on the rise, the feelings these two share and the relationship they develop is off the charts. I cried while reading this story, I cheered for Gage, heck I cheered for Tess too! Get caught up on the characters from the first book but you get the full story of Gage & Tess and you will fall in love! 5 rock stars, and I’m hoping for maybe Hannah’s story next???? Grab this book NOW!
My One Despair by Claudia Burgoa….OMG!!! This book was one hell of a beautiful, emotional, heartbreaking thrill ride. My One Despair is full of angst, and heartbreaking emotion. Let me just say the story of Gage and Tess is quite the story taking you on an incredible journey!!
The characters, the storyline is all PERFECTION!!! MS Burgoa is such a fantastic author. Able to draw her readers into the story, feeling all the feels! So many twists and turns in this journey of love, loss, and redemption. I highly recommend this book! A beautifully written 5 star.
Tess and Gage’s have such an amazing and beautiful love story in ” My One Despair”. The emotions in this story are such a rollercoaster ride and such will pull the emotions out of you are so unreal! Where the story called for it, I laughed,or I cried, I even sighed, I was even awww’ing in many places. For me, I was falling in love with Gage at the same time that Tess herself was. I read as Tess grew and opened up her heart up to love and to Gage. Gage would have done completely, totally, absolutely anything for Tess, outright anything. This couple had it going for them—- until— they didn’t; that one phone call broke their hopes and shattered their dreams.
Fast forward 6 years later —Gage and Tess meet again. Tess is still grieving the loss of their broken relationship but there is someone who has need of her and she can’t walk away from them. But then she finds out the real truth about what really happened that night 6 years before–what even Gage’s brothers didn’t even know. Suddenly lives are being changed again. Can Tess and Gage find their way back to one another? Will they even want to after all this time ?
This story was so intense mixed with angst and heat. My emotions were literally all over the pages of this book as I read for I was feeling the happiness, tension, frustration, heat, sadness, devestation, loss, passion, joy, laughter and love! I admit I did cry some , and laughed a bit loud a few . I became emotionally bonded to the characters because HELLO- its Gage and Tess. You cant help but become emotionally invested in them. This is such a beautiful and amazing story that will stay with you long afterwards.
My Rating: 4.8 stars *****
seeing Tess Hades again was so bittersweet for me! My heart held her so close while I read My One Regret and I was so happy to get her story and see what her life is like now as an adult, and I am completely blown away with the story that Claudia wrote. I was not expecting to become even more attached to a family that I already love dearly, but yet here I am sobbing so many tears for so many reasons because this family is just so amazing.
Tess is finally coming into her own and navigating who she is and who she wants to be. Fate leads her straight to Gage and together they discover that with the support of the other they can do anything! What they don’t expect to happen is to be torn apart by hidden truths.
I couldn’t have pictured a more perfect soul to match Tess’s the way the Gage’s had. you could feel the spark, sense the connection through the pages and you knew that no matter where life took them, those two were more than just friends, more than just lovers they were each others perfect match!
This was quite a story… so many emotions, and twists, some heartache, tender moments… I was hooked from the very beginning. Great storytelling. Highly recommended!
*I voluntarily reviewed an advanced reader copy of this book.*
I always wondered how Tess would be as an adult. She had so much heartbreak. She is an amazing and caring woman!
Now Gage….he was just so swoony *sigh*
These broken souls are so desperate for each others love. But can they get past the heartbreak and find their way back to each other?
Another emotional rollercoaster from Claudia.
Be warned..you might need some tissues!
This book was fantastic! Musicians, young love, and a twist that made my heart drop! Claudia Burgoa is an excellent story teller; I was sucked in almost immediately. This book can absolutely be read as a standalone, though there is character crossover from previous books. Definitely a great read!
This was an amazing book! This was one of my favorites. I loved the characters so much and I felt every emotion with them as I read this story! I love how Gage and Tess are so passionate about their careers, and how much they love each other. I wasn’t sure where this story was going to go but I never would have guessed what was going to happen! There’s a big twist! This story kept my full attention and I didn’t want to put it down, I had to find out what would happen! I would highly recommend this story!
Tess has come a long way from the teenager we met in My One Regret. Her scars may not be visible but that doesn’t make them any less painful and because of her past she does not allow many people close and trusting other is an issue. She doesn’t trust her judgment and is never sure if people want to be around her because of who she is or because of her family.
When Gage meets Tess for the first time he is an up and coming rock star who is working three jobs. He sees the walls she has built around her heart and slowly but surely, he manages to dismantle them one brick at a time. All is going well until it isn’t, and she disappears from his life for six years.
They reconnect at a time when Gage needs her the most, but can he count on the one person he has always loved or is their past too strong to overcome?
Full of emotion and angst this story takes you on an incredible journey. They may have been apart in distance, but their hearts were always together.