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Review

3 stars

Molly O’Keefe rocked my world with Everything I Left Unsaid, and this book is set in the same world. Joan and Max are both introduced in the first two books of the series – Joan as Annie’s sassy neighbour, and Max as Dylan’s badass biker brother – and though we get a tantalising hint of their story in The Truth About Him (book 2), this book could easily be read as a standalone.

Joan and Max’s story is dark and twisted. They first laid eyes on each other when Max saw Joan on stage as a stripper. They shared a hot, intense moment, but neither of them were in a position to pursue anything so it’s been nothing but eye-fuckery since then. But when Joan’s plans to rescue her sister from a bad situation fall apart amidst bomb blasts and biker attacks, she ends up on the run with a gravely wounded Max in the back seat of her car and figures that she’ll get him help and then hold him hostage until he agrees to use his criminal connections to help her.

Joan is a complex character. She has had a hard life and has made a habit of pushing people away, not letting anybody get close and shunning anybody who tries to care for her. She loves her sister of course, but she has no intentions of letting the scarily hot biker get to her.

This guy, this fucking guy. It was a chemistry thing between us, something animal and base. Unreasonable.

Max is similarly damaged. He grew up in the MC and has seen and done it all. He has spent the last few years anticipating death and doing everything he can to push away his loved ones in order to protect them from his life impacting on them in any way. He’s seriously pissed at Joan for holding him captive, but he can’t deny that he wants her more than his next breath.

“I got no time anymore for shit that ain’t real. Revenge – that’s real. This thing between us – that’s so fucking real I can taste it. So, that’s all I want. And you want that too, don’t you?”

Joan and Max have a bizarre dynamic. Both of them in mad lust with each other, but neither of them are willing to let down their guards and truly open up to each other. Instead, they enter into a battle of crazy head games. All underpinned by their wild attraction, there is all sorts of teasing, touching, watching and even a surprising f/f scene as they battle it out for control over the other. Honestly, I didn’t really get it. I thought it was weird, and though I could feel the chemistry between them, it wasn’t really exciting me very much.

But once they start to let loose with each other a bit and actually get to know each other, I really enjoyed their moments of friendship and teasing. The banter is great, I love the situation they were in with their accommodation, and I held out for those moments where we get those rare glimpses of the real them.

“Save your act for other people. The lies and the show – I don’t want it. I want you. Fucked up and crazy. I want you.”

For a smutty book, this book has a whole lot of smut without very much sex. And though the build-up didn’t do a whole lot for me, I like that by the time something happened between them there was an emotional connection there. It made it so much more intense.

“You want to fuck, let’s do it. Let’s burn down the fucking place. We got that in us…between us. But when it’s over…all I’ll leave you are bruises. Because that’s all I have to give you.”

Our eyes were locked, I couldn’t look away. I was a fly in his web and he was coming for me – I knew it. But I couldn’t do anything to stop it. I didn’t want to do anything to stop it.

But can they break down their walls enough to truly let each other in? And is it possible for two people with their pasts to ever have a happy ending? And then there’s the issue of Joan’s sister, and with the bad guy knowing that Joan is after him, there is an added sense of danger in the story as we wait for the inevitable confrontation.

This was a bit of a weird book for me. Parts of it I really enjoyed, but a lot of the time I was bored and, yeah, a little irritated. I found it really hard to relate to Joan and didn’t understand a lot of her decision making, so I didn’t feel the relationship as much as I wanted to. I did really like Max though. He was a total badass, but he had a lot of heart and a wicked sense of humour, and I loved watching him loosen up.

I liked the tie in to the earlier books of the series. I love Dylan and Annie’s story, so was excited to get to see them again, and I enjoyed the Max/Dylan dynamic a lot. And there’s further set up for more books in the series, which I’m looking forward to reading.

Like other books of Molly’s that I have read, this is a really well written story. I think it was the odd dynamic between the characters that kept me from truly connecting. But it ends well, with an epilogue that finishes off the story nicely.

3 stars.

An Advanced Review Copy was generously provided by the author via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

 

Everything I Left Unsaid series