Tate’s next-door neighbor, Jared, was her best friend until he came home from a summer with his father at the age of fourteen. Something happened to him on that trip, something that made him hateful and cruel to Tate, bullying her, spreading nasty rumors about her, and making her an unwelcome outcast in her own high school. But after a year in France, she’s a new and stronger young woman, able to stand up for herself and fight back. Can she face down Jared and his friends? Will she be able to handle the results when she does? And will she ever win her friend back – and will either of them be able to manage the passionate attraction behind their private warfare?
Douglas is very good at evoking emotion – the entire book is powerful and charged with anger, pain, desire and longing. The reader is drawn into the characters’ fierce and conflicted emotions, making it difficult to put down the book until the final resolution. The erotic scenes are blazingly hot, practically singing the page. Tate’s discovery of her own self-confidence is a beautiful thing, and Jared’s character is drawn with enough complicated emotional baggage to explain, if not excuse, his behavior.
The book buys a bit too much into the dangerous idea that male abuse and bullying are merely a cover for real love and desire. It’s difficult to believe that a relationship with someone as emotionally damaged as Jared is has much chance of success – he does grow up substantially through the novel, but he’s still reacting viscerally with his fists and his anger, even when he’s stopped directing that anger at Tate. The vivid and compelling emotional writing might be a disadvantage for those who have bad memories of harassment and bullying in their past, too, bringing back painful triggers.
This is a heated and passionate novel, full of feeling and intensity, and will appeal to the reader seeking an emotional rush. Don’t pick it up, though, if remembering high school still makes you cringe.
Reviewed by Catherine Langrehr for IndieReader