Save me from my past.
Save me from my fear.
Save me from my pain.
Save me from myself.

The Stone brothers are the reason I can smile again. They are my only light in the drowning darkness. What started as friendship between them and me has become something more. They want me and I want them, too. But that won’t happen with my grief tearing me apart.

Will I succumb to my grief and let it destroy me? Or will my guys be able to save me?

Yeah…read this in 2 hours. Was supposed to be doing something else. The book distracted me…not sorry.

So, this book picks up from the cliffhanger of book 1 and thankfully that part of the book is resolved fairly quickly. This book focuses more on Shiloh and the trauma she has. It’s about that trauma weighing her down and taking her to a place of darkness and a place where she shuts herself off from the world. Much of this book centres around the fact that Shiloh isn’t coming, and it is about her coming to the realisation that she needs to go back to therapy.

Around the spiral she’s having we do get to see more of her strength and fighting spirit. She spars pretty effectively with the four brothers, and it is only when she reaches her rock bottom that we see her act without thought and give into requests without a fight.

I spoke about characters with trauma in my review of the first book in this series, Trauma can make a character act in a certain way and trauma, whether good or bad, will always push a narrative in a certain way. When you encounter a character who carries trauma from before you met them, the question always becomes how far you can push them before they break.

Knowing that Mr X is still out there leaves me with the certainty that there will be a climatic return and narrative (I suspect in the final book), but outside of that there is only so much a character can take. Shiloh is fighting on two fronts. We have the creep Jacob, and we have the school bullying and while I was definitely irritated on the character’s behalf while reading, I did struggle to connect so much trauma onto an already laden character – I’m not sure how much that makes sense or not.

Logan, Shiloh’s uncle also returns during this book and my feelings towards him as a character are incredibly mixed. I want to support him as the last living relative of Shiloh’s but then again, he hasn’t shown himself in a good light so far and his actions during this book had me fuming with anger. I understand the point of making a good narrative and creating a compelling cliffhanger. However, I still don’t see much relevance to his character. I think Shiloh and the plot could survive well without him, so I’m not clear on why he’s a recurring character.

I suppose I will discover in the third book the relevance of Logan as a character. However much trauma the character carries, I will be pleased if I see her enjoying her life a little more outside of the horrors she’s faced. I understand how difficult that will be for the character but I think it will also do her a world of good to rediscover the joys of life.

I give this book: ✨✨✨✨

Spice: 🌶️🌶️