Mia finally snaps when he cheats on her and tries to rape her, and flees in search of the mother who abandoned her as a baby. Her search leads her to a hotel run by the extremely attractive Jordan Matthews, who hides his own feelings of worthlessness with casual sexual encounters and a detached attitude. Neither of them feel they can handle getting closer to each other, but inexorably, they find themselves drawn together, finally falling deeply and intensely in love. But traumatic revelations from the past threaten their relationship, and leave both of them struggling for solid emotional ground.
This is a deeply emotional story, with a lot of intensity and drama (though it manages to deftly avoid falling over the line into melodrama). Both characters are well-drawn and three-dimensional; the author clearly shows the damage done to Mia by her horrific childhood without making her pitiable, and does not, for a change, suggest that the scars inflicted by a lifetime of abuse can be overturned the moment the heroine meets a good man who will beat up her abuser for her. The love affair between the couple feels like a real emotional connection, rather than simply resting on physical attraction, and the reader can feel reasonably confident that their love will be able to survive despite everything.
The coincidence that leads to the final conflict is a bit far-fetched, perhaps even Dickensian, but it’s not completely beyond belief. The book as a whole could use an edit, particularly for apostrophes (Jordan regularly refers to a planned hotel visit by “the Perry’s,” for example, rather than “the Perrys”).
This is a warm and tender love story, with enough real emotional conflict and pain in it to make the happy ending all that much more satisfying. If you want a good cry along with the promise that it will all work out in the end, pick up this book.
Reviewed by Catherine Langrehr for IndieReader