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Review

3.5 *SIGH* stars

I’m really torn on how I feel about this book. On one hand, I loved being back with Gideon and Eva. I enjoyed seeing them together, working through their issues, and fighting hard to find their happy ending. On the other hand though, I found this book to be really repetitive, and there just wasn’t enough happening in the story.

Gideon and Eva’s turbulent yet highly passionate relationship continues to be the focus of the series, and this book sees them newly married, yet keeping their marriage a secret as their engagement is made public and they go about planning their more public wedding. And even though this is the fourth book in the series, I had to keep reminding myself that the whole storyline so far has all taken place within a couple of months. So they are still very much in the beginning stages of their relationship even though they have, in some ways, come so far.

Their passion for each other is still as strong as ever, although it has an added sense of intensity to it with them being so crazy in love and their need for each other only continues to grow – and once again the sexy time in this book is off the freaking charts as they continue to explore each other anywhere, any time, and any way they can! They are literally obsessed with each other, and totally co-dependent, but they acknowledge it, and I love their attitude towards it – this is them, this is what they feel, and fuck whatever the rest of the world thinks!

“For God’s sake, Eva, we’re married. We’re in love. There’s no shame in that. So what if it’s crazy? It’s us. It’s who we are. You need to come to grips with that.”

But with that intense relationship, comes a WHOLE lot of drama! Or, as Cary so accurately puts it…

“You guys are whackjobs separately. Together, you’re a Goddamn nuthouse.”

Gideon and Eva both have traumatic backgrounds, and that continues to impact on who they are, and the way that they relate to each other. And they both have a lot to work through in order to have a relationship. I have always loved the way that they talk to each other and deal with their issues, but this book is just more of the same, and I don’t think it was enough to carry the whole book.

And all of the external drama is, again, just more of the same that they’ve already encountered – drama with Brett (ugh!), Corrine (UGH!), Eva’s mother, Gideon’s mother, Ann and Christopher, and the ongoing drama of therapy and Gideon’s past (although I did like the developments with Chris, he’s turning out to be quite awesome!). And then you have all of the relationship drama as Gideon goes about trying to protect Eva and deal with everything, and Eva the therapy queen wants to deal with things a different way – so they argue, they make up, they have sex, they’re happy for a little while and they have sex…. they argue, they make up, they have more sex…and repeat. And the whole way through we get every single little detail about every single little thing, and it’s all a bit eye rolling going through the same drama over and over again.

I loved their happy time, because they tease and joke, they are loving and all kinds of sexy, and they are so beautiful together…

“You okay, angel mine?”
“I’m in your arms. Life doesn’t get better than this.”

… but it’s always so fleeting, and leaves me with a sense of dread about what is around the corner because you know it’s not going to last long before another drama pops up – usually the following day.

On the plus side, for the first time in this book, we get Gideon’s POV. At first I wasn’t sure about it, because I like him being all mysterious, but the more I read from his perspective, I loved getting to see where his head was at. I loved seeing the badass businessman, as he dominated over his empire, as well as the more relaxed side of him as he just hung with his friends. Yes! Gideon has friends! And seeing him as just a regular guy was awesome. I also really liked seeing his growing relationship with Ireland, and his relationship with Angus, which was really sweet. And, of course, his love for Eva, the way he would do anything to keep her safe, and his appreciation of what she means to him is beautiful, and it gave me happy shivers every time he referred to her as “my wife”, even if only in his head.

My wife would fight the world for me. It was miraculous to know that. When no one else had fought for me, I’d somehow found the one soul who would.

And I have to say that seeing his perspective on things helped me to understand some of his behaviour that I may have questioned if I only got Eva’s POV. Eva can be quite level headed, but she also has a tendency to over-react, so I liked this more balanced approach. Especially because her drama queen antics pissed me off again! Granted, I would have been pissed off too, but she over-dramatised it all, and my heart broke seeing Gideon in so much pain.

“I’m fighting here, with everything I’ve got. Fight for me too.”

Oh, and I’ve gotta say that Cary annoyed me in this one too – I know he’s got issues, but seriously? Get your shit together, man!

I’ve seen a lot of people saying that this book has the feeling of a ‘filler’, and I would have to say that I agree. Yes, Gideon and Eva are continuing to deal with their issues, and that is an important part of their relationship, but I would have preferred some actual storyline to go along with that. If Sylvia Day was going to extend her series, she needed to add something to it, not just give us more of the same. Especially because we have waited SO long for this book to come out, and paid SO much money to read it. It’s a lot of expense for so little story!

I can see why the die-hard fans of the series would love this book, because it’s more of Gideon and Eva doing what they do best – making their way through their lives, having sex at each and every opportunity, dealing with their myriad of issues and loving each other more and more. But as much as I have enjoyed the previous books in this series, there just wasn’t enough going on in the story for me to love it.

It pains me to do this, but – 3.5 stars.

 

The Crossfire series