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Review

Such a fantastic book! I loved it!!!

Erin Watt is the pseudonym for the writing team that is Elle Kennedy and Jen Fredericks, and for their debut novel they have given us a wonderfully intense story that is emotional, exciting, heartbreaking, uplifting, fantastically angsty, funny, sexy and romantic. It’s gloriously addictive, like book crack, and I was captivated from start to finish.

Ella Harper is an incredibly strong, brave and resilient character that is the heart and soul of this book, and I absolutely love her! She is 17 years old, never knew her father and has lived a hard life with her single mother, moving from town to town and being exposed to all kinds of awful situations until her tragic mother’s death. On her own, Ella worked three jobs, including dancing in a strip club, in order to pay for her mother’s medical bills and get by, and still worked hard to continue her studies so that she can graduate high school, go to college and achieve her dream of a ‘normal’ life.

I’m only seventeen. Sometimes that feels too young to have lived the life I have. Sometimes I look around at my surroundings and think, I don’t belong here.

Ella’s life shifts completely when Callum Royal comes into her life. Claiming to be the best friend of the father she never met, he claims that he is her legal guardian and whisks her away to his home to live with him and his family. Immediately, Ella finds herself suddenly in the lap of luxury, surrounded by wealth and privilege and about to enter a world that is completely foreign to her.

She wants nothing more than to fly under the radar, get through school and get gone, but that’s not about to happen. Callum has five sons – all gorgeous, all privileged, and all completely antagonistic towards Ella. They are angry and resentful towards their father, suspicious of Ella and her motives, and they make it very clear that she is not welcome. Their behaviour continues to the exclusive high school that Ella is enrolled in, as the Royal boys rule the school, she is targeted as an outsider from the very beginning. And worst of all is second eldest son, Reed Royal.

“You should know whatever game you’re playing, you can’t win. Not against all of us. If you leave now, you won’t be hurt. If you stay, we’ll break you so bad that you’ll be crawling away.”

Reed is asshole extraordinaire, but he is also the boy who gets Ella’s blood pumping in a way she’s never experienced before. But Ella doesn’t let that fact stop her from standing up to him, and I was pumping my fist at her awesomeness!

I meet Reed’s hard eyes with defiant ones. “Do your worst. You’re an amateur compared to what I’ve been through.”

Ella is incredible! She’s had a hellish life, and dumped into a seemingly perfect lifestyle that is, in fact, a new kind of hell, but she keeps on pushing through. She doesn’t apologise for who she is or feel ashamed of what she’s gone through, she stands strong and fights back at the people determined to break her, and she had me cheering for her the whole way through.

Somewhere along the line, I started thinking that if I just got through this bad experience, this bad day, that tomorrow I’d have something better, brighter, newer.
I still believe that. I still believe that there’s something good out there for me. I just have to keep going until my time comes.

See! Isn’t she awesome!!!

Ella’s fight to stay true to herself and not let the people around her bring her down eventually leads to a shift in the boys’ perception of her, and this is when the story really gets going. It’s a slow evolution as the boys start to accept her, and the change in dynamic gives us a whole new story.

The Royal boys, while initially being awful, actually turned out to be fantastic characters. Assholes, yeah, but they’re all suffering in their own ways and as Ella gets to know them, she comes to understand them better, and the changed dynamic between them is fantastic!

“Look, I like you. Didn’t think I would but I do, and because I like you, I feel the need to warn you that we Royals are pretty fucked up. We’re good in bed, but out of it? We’re like a stage four hurricane. “

Middle brother was Easton totally stole my heart. He’s such a great character, I’m really looking forward to his story being explored a bit more, and his humour and his friendship with Ella added something really special to the book.

“Nuh-uh, you’re not getting off that easy. I want you to say it. Tell your big brother about your crush on your other big brother.”
“You’re imagining things. I’m not crushing on Reed,” I lie.
“Bull.”
“I’m not,” I insist, but Easton sees right through me.
“Shit, Ella, I need a smoke every time you two are within five feet of each other.”

And then there’s Reed. Oh holy hell, the boy is pure broody, angsty, bad boy sexiness and the chemistry between him and Ella sensational! Of course there’s animosity, but from the very start there’s something much deeper between them, a connection that deepens with each encounter, and the sexual tension gets more and more intense as the story goes on.

I tug his head down to mine. “I need you, Reed. Don’t make me beg.”
And just like that, he gives in. One hand comes up to tangle in my hair while the other pulls me roughly against him. “You don’t ever have to ask again. I’ll give you anything you want.”

The story is told entirely from Ella’s POV, and it’s absolutely seamless! You wouldn’t think this is a book written by two authors, they’ve done an AMAZING job with it. There’s a whole range of storylines intersecting throughout the story – school, family, relationship and personal issues for each of the characters, and the individual plotlines are brilliantly woven together to create a multifaceted story that sucked me in and had me feeling EVERYTHING! I don’t want to give anything else away, you just need to read the book to experience it for yourself, but it’s a wonderful journey that had my heart pounding as it all unfolded.

It all ends on a hideous cliffy that made me literally scream out loud ‘WTF IS GOING ON?!?!?!’. But even if it didn’t end like it did, I’d still be desperate for more. I’m so entranced by the story, I can’t wait to continue on. Thank God July isn’t too far away.

5 stars!

(Just a warning too, that though the characters are high-school age, this is definitely not a YA read. It’s got explicit language and sexual content, and reads more like an NA book, just with younger characters).