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Review
3.5 stars
A messy, complicated and angsty second-chance-romance that is full of emotion, heartache and longing, but that ultimately delivers an intense, passionate love story that I could not stop reading.
This is the first book in the Nashville Outlaws series, which focusses around a large group of family and friends in Nashville making up not one, but two country/rock bands (plus friends), and a whole lot of characters for us to get to know.
Alice and Navarone (aka ‘Rone’) met as teenagers and fell hard for each other over a summer holiday. They loved hard and fast, and they thought they would be together forever, but it wasn’t to be. Ten years later, Alice is working with her father at their Nashville recording studio, and Rone is an up-and-coming country/rock star. She wants absolutely nothing to do with the guy who shattered her heart, but when her father arranges for Rone’s band, Outlaw, the record at their studio, she is forced back into proximity with a man who is determined to win her back.
“Why did you come?” I ask, feeling his hot breath against my lips.
“I came here for you, Allie.”
The feels and the chemistry are intense from the very beginning. From the moment we see Alice and Rone together, you know that there is so much emotion between them. But while there is love there, it’s buried beneath years and years of pain, anger, guilt and regret, and even though Rone makes it clear that he’s in town to make amends and get his girl back, you know it’s going to be a difficult journey.
“I hate myself for asking you to love me again. I’m a fucking selfish bastard for still loving you. You’re my home, babe. That part never changed.”
Their love story begins so beautifully – full of excitement and hope, of swoony declarations and steamy, intense passion, but when we see them in the future, it’s a hot mess. Seriously. There is no doubt that Alice and Rone love each other fiercely, but the circumstances around their breakup were chaotic (and not fully revealed while we’re in the process of trying to figure out the dynamic between them), and the years following that are a tumultuous mess (again, not fully revealed while we’re in the heart of trying to understand it all). There is so much passion between them, so much emotion, and I could feel the wildly swinging emotions that the two of them were throwing out.
“No, Al, I’m not going to leave you alone. You still belong to me,” he roars … “It wasn’t over for me.”
The story begins in the present, but flashes back to past events throughout the book. I’m usually ok with this sort of set up, but here it got a little confusing at times because events would be alluded to, but we wouldn’t actually get to know the details of what the characters were talking about until later in the book. And the actual timeline of events doesn’t become clear until right towards the end of the book, which messed with me a bit because we don’t actually get a clear picture of the relationship and all that has happened between the characters until right at the very end. So, all of those reactions from the beginning of the story, and the complex back-and-forth doesn’t get explained until it’s pretty much all over. In a relationship like this, which was so turbulent and up and down for so many years, it was hard to keep things straight.
Leaning back, I look deep into his eyes. The hurt in them tears me apart. “I need time,” I say.
“Will you ever love me again, like you once did?” He asks, his voice hoarse.
I don’t know what to tell him.
I got frustrated so many times at Alice for the way she treated Rone. Not only because we didn’t have all of the information upfront and therefore didn’t know all that had gone on between them, but there is an almost continuous push and pull between them – mostly with Rone doing the pushing, but sometimes Alice would be prepared to listen, and other times she wouldn’t. Sometimes she responded to his advances, and then she wouldn’t. And she kept asking him why he was there after he had made that clear SO many times! With all of the push and pull, the fighting, the apologising and the walking away from each other, at times it seemed unclear who was fighting for what.
“Our story isn’t over.” He gazes at me. “This is our fucking story – nobody else’s. Remember that.”
But in the middle of it all, we have this broken man who knows he messed up, and who is trying hard to make things right again. Navarone lays everything on the line, putting his heart right out there, begging for a second chance, and I loved that! From his discrete touches, his dirty words, his flirtatious winks and grins, to his swoony, impassioned pleas, he holds nothing back in his efforts to get his second chance with the love of his life.
“This love still means something. Hell, it’s fucking worth fighting for.”
It’s an emotional rollercoaster for sure, but I was hooked from start to finish. I was so intrigued by these characters and their lives, and I was desperate to understand what happened to them and how they got to where they are. And though I felt like the story unfolded a bit clumsily, it eventually all becomes clear, and they finally find their way back to each other. It’s a long time coming (both for them and for the reader), and they have a lot of false starts along the way, but Navarone fights hard, and he completely stole my heart as the hero fighting to get his happy ending with the girl he loves.
“When the fucking lights go off onstage, this is the me you’re getting. Is that enough for you?”
“Yes … you have always been enough.”
There’s a huge cast of side characters involved in Alice and Rone’s story. It was initially a bit hard keeping track of all them all because there are just so many of them, and you can tell that they are being set up for their own stories, which is great, but it means you need to pay attention to them and who they are linked to, and trying to keep straight the huge group of fathers, brothers, cousins, bandmates, friends and best-friends – most of whom are guys – was a bit tricky at times. But I loved the different dynamics at play within the group, the teasing, banter and jokes are a great balance to the heaviness of the love story, and I’m really excited to read more about them. Alice’s twin brother, Gunner’s story is up next, and I’m so intrigued by him, so I can’t wait for that.
This book was a hard slog at times, but I still couldn’t put it down. I was so invested in Alice and Navarone’s story, and I finished this book with a happy heart and a big grin on my face.
3.5 stars.