Constant
The Confidence Game, Part One
by Rachel Higginson
Released November 16, 2017
Available now!
Kindle Ebook
Blurb
Fifteen years ago I met Sayer Wesley. I fell in love with him. I promised I would never leave him. I swore nothing could break us apart.
Five years ago I broke my promise. I ran away. I took the one secret that could destroy us both and disappeared.
Five days ago I thought I saw him.
I knew it was impossible. Sayer was locked away, serving a deserved sentence in federal prison. He couldn’t find me.
He wouldn’t find me. I was too good at hiding. Too good at surviving.
Because if Sayer ever found me, there would be hell to pay for a plethora of sins. The worst of which, he didn’t even know about.
Five hours ago, I told myself I was crazy.
Five minutes ago, I saw him again.
Five seconds ago, I was too late.
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Review
5 “I will never be the same” stars!!
A true confidence game takes skill, finesse, hours of planning and plotting and finally, when your team has been assembled and the stars align and the wind blows just right, it takes perfect execution.
…
And in the end, the game must be played perfectly. Everything must go according to plan. Everything must fall into place and happen exactly right. The stakes are high. The risks are great.
Yet the consequences are not enough to turn us away.
We’ve heard the siren’s song and responded to her deathly lure. We’re not criminals. We’re artists.
Con artists.
At least I was once upon a time…
Caroline has been part of the Russian mob syndicate in DC since she could remember. Even at ten she is the best liar around and an integral part of the cons they ran. One night during a job a new player is pulled into the game. A boy who isn’t from that life. A boy who makes an impact. It is his first taste of the game, one that will alter the course of his life taking Caroline with him.
“Let’s go, kid!” Jack shouted after Sayer. He stepped forward, out of the alley and into the confidence game that would irrevocably change his life. The confidence game that would change us both forever.
Though it’s the only life she knows, Caroline doesn’t love being part of the mob. When she falls for Sayer, things only get more complicated and her dreams of escaping get pushed aside. Then when things go terribly wrong, she knows she has to leave even if it means leaving broken hearts in her wake.
Different realities surfaced, forcing me to reprioritize…
I had been willing to gamble before. I had chanced everything often and won every single time. Until one day, the reward wasn’t worth the risk. Until I knew I had to leave the darkness behind, even if it meant giving up the game.
Wow, what a story! Talk about an angst-filled, emotionally intense, rollercoaster of a ride. It’s consuming and captivating from the first page to last. Written in Caroline’s POV, we jump back and forth from past to present and every word is engrossing. The flashbacks are enlightening and it’s thrilling to watch the story play out. With twists and turns I didn’t see coming, it kept me fully immersed in the lives of the characters. Characters who are fascinating, real, raw, and wonderfully complex.
I adored Caroline. She’s an amazing woman, with a huge heart, solid backbone, and steely determination. Her resolve to make a new life was beautiful. She knew what she was doing when she broke her promise to never leave Sayer and though that choice was utterly heartbreaking, her conviction remained strong.
Sayer is intriguing and mysterious, and you can’t help but fall for this complicated man. He’s changed when he reenters Caroline’s life and I could feel his anger and hurt.
His lips moved over mine in a way they never had before. This wasn’t the sweet, gentle familiar Sayer I’d fallen in love as a kid. This was a man that had spent five years in prison alone, abandoned, hardened. This was his shocking transformation on display.
He’s broken but perfectly flawed. His heart. His soul. His vulnerabilities. His truths. *Sigh* I loved everything about him. His intensity lit me on fire and his honesty left me swooning.
Caroline and Sayer share a powerful connection and from the moment meet their lives are never the same. I loved watching two teens fall in love and then seeing them fight to overcome the pain and heartache while handling their hearts as adults. Even after years spent apart their chemistry is electric but anger and hostility coats it making the sexual tension even stronger and more tangible than before. There was nothing that could douse the flames between them.
This fire between us had been building and building and building and we’d just been adding fuel without bothering to contain it or tame it. And now there was no stopping it. We’d built this pyre, and now we would have to burn at its mercy.
Running from the past that haunts her, Caroline is living in a small town in Colorado and things seem to be going well. I knew it was only a matter of time before her new life is threatened and I found myself waiting for the other shoe to drop. When Sayer shows up five years after she left him, their reunion is intense, emotional, and messy. She isn’t expecting to see him again and it is a tangle of surprise, confusion, anger, heartbreak, fear, and longing. They have such a heavy history and it left an ache in my chest.
My heart tore in two. Divided in half by want and need, past and present, life and death.
This story is full of feels. All the emotion that was jam-packed in the past and present, I felt it. I lived it. I loved it. The heartache was devastating but worth it when you have a love like Caroline and Sayer’s, solid and all-consuming. Every touch. Every kiss. Everything between them made my heart skip a beat. By the end I was a gooey mess on the floor with tears streaking down my cheeks and a warmness in my heart.
“You think my feelings started when we kissed?” His eyebrows drew down over his eyes. “You think my feelings started a couple months ago? Come on, Six, I’ve been after you since the first day I met you.
Since you saved my life and gave me something to live for.”
The way the story unfolded was exciting and I love how the romance, mystery, and suspense was weaved together. There were wonderfully intense scenes that made me a nervous wreck. My heart was pounding, my body was shaking, and I just about chewed off all of my nails. I didn’t know what was to come and OMG that cliffy?!?! I can’t stand it! This story grabbed me and won’t let me go until I know what happens.
Overall, Constant is a fantastic, emotionally charged, second-chance romance and I loved it!! It’s just the beginning, though, and after finishing the first book in the Confidence Series, I am now fully invested in Caroline and Sayer’s lives and I am desperately waiting for Consequence so I can get my grabby little hands on more. More Caroline and Sayer. More answers. More excitement. More feels. More everything. February can’t come soon enough!
*ARC generously provided by the author*
Teaser
His mouth was on mine before I could answer. Bruising, punishing… defeating me. I was so surprised I could only stand there and let him kiss me.
But that didn’t stop him. His lips moved over mine in a way they never had before. This wasn’t the sweet, gentle familiar of kids that had fallen in love as kids. This was a man that had spent five years in prison alone, abandoned, hardened. This was his shocking transformation on display. His muscled arms and broad chest. His darker, more serious eyes and the hard, chiseled jaw. This was the man that had gone through hell and survived.
“Come on, Caro,” he growled against my lips, shaking my arms roughly at the same time. “Fight back.”
My mouth responded before my brain could figure out what he meant. On a gasp, his tongue was in my mouth, coaxing me to kiss him back, reminding me of how explosive we were together, seducing me into a world I did not want to go.
The Confidence Game
