Forgive Me (Lost Souls, #1)

by Eliza Freed

"The thing he loves most in the world will kill him. It's only a matter of time . . . " College student Charlotte O'Brien is lost and she can't find her way home. Devastated by her parents' tragic deaths, she aches for any kind of connection . . . and finds it in a man who is all wrong for her. Jason Leer is a rough-hewn steer wrestler from Oklahoma-and the hottest thing Charlotte has ever laid eyes on. Yet he has his own dark secrets . . . Burying herself in Jason, Charlotte soon discovers that life doesn't have to be so painful. When they're together their passion eclipses everything-and Charlotte can finally begin to see a way out of the darkness of her past. Fighting for a future with Jason won't be easy, but for the first time since her parents' deaths, this lost soul might have finally found a place that feels like home.

• ISBN10: 1455583561
• ISBN13: 9781455583560
• Publish Date: 4 November 2014 (first published 1 January 2014)
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: Forever
• Format: Paperback (UK Trade)
• Pages: 368
• Language: English

Reviews

[Suz @ Bookish Revelations]

Emotionally compelling and incredibly intense, Forgive Me will leave you breathless and anticipating more. [a:Eliza Freed|7857490|Eliza Freed|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1393089740p2/7857490.jpg] has cornered the New Adult market on writing completely obsessive and dysfunctional romance. Jason Leer isn't one of my favorite characters, I found him to be completely controlling, manipulative, and an all around ass in the way he treated Charlotte. There were moments in the book where I wanted her to realize just how unhealthy their relationship really was. I swear, I just wanted to shake her shoulders and tell to wake up, because there was a much better guy staring her in the face and she never looked twice at him that way once.

Noble Sinclare is one incredibly hot, swoon-worthy guy that would be absolutely perfect for Charlotte if she would just open her eyes. He knows her and it's apparently obvious how much he cares for her. He's the one who could best take care of her, without expecting her to just completely uproot her life and be someone she's not. He certainly wouldn't do to her what Jason did over some stupid fight they had about which function they were going to.

Charlotte is an angry mess right now and that is understandable, given the fact that she just lost both her parents and then hopped into this crazy intense relationship as a way of avoiding the whole grieving process. I sort of have a love hate relationship with this character, but I do like her quite a bit. I'm just not necessarily crazy about some of the choices that she makes in the way that she lets Jason make her feel guilty. This is part of the charm in her character, because her faults make her a little more human and achingly vulnerable. It's a breath of fresh air to read a complicated love story as this one written so realistically that you almost feel a personal connection to it. That's always something that I look for in a book, something that grips me, and makes me reel back in a million and one different ways.

After Noble, Charlotte's friends were probably my second favorite thing about this book, because there were many of them and they each had their own facets and quirks that made me stand out and shine brilliantly on the pages. I love the way they rallied around Charlotte, knew what she needed, and wasn't afraid to tell her what they thought even if it meant an argument because they were doing it as means of having her back and taking care of her in the process. Good friends like family are hard to come by and the honesty that this lot showed was pretty amazing. Charlotte's relationship with her brother was also endearing to read about, because the level of care and love was so apparent between the two. I'll admit I might have chuckled a time or two, when he was trying to buy her a Hummer because he needed her to be safe and he couldn't lose one more person who was that important in his life. As over-protective as he was in a sense, he was really sweet and enjoyable as a character.

As hot and steamy as I like my romance books to be, I have to say that my only little minor frustration with this novel was the amount of sex that was written into it. For a second, I almost felt as if I was reading Fifty Shades and nearly put the book down. Luckily, I came to my senses and decided to keep on reading it. It's not that I have problem with sex written in books in general, with this particular story it was more to the point of it feeling like that's all that there was between Charlotte and Jason and that just didn't sit too well with me. I get that sex is an important and healthy part of a loving relationship and I'm completely fine with that and fine with reading it, but when it starts being all consuming with more of physical nature to the relationship and less about talking and actually communicating on an emotional level that's where I sort of start to draw the line. There needs to be a little bit more of a healthy balance there, in the relationship. As I mentioned before, Charlotte jumped into this crazy intense controlling relationship with Jason, without giving herself enough time to properly grieve the loss of her parents. I wish she would have taken a step back and let herself go through that experience, before deciding that she was all in whatever she was carrying on with that Leer boy.

[b:Forgive Me|18656249|Forgive Me (Lost Souls, #1)|Eliza Freed|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1401898101s/18656249.jpg|26471020] isn't an easy read in the least little bit. It's messy, complicated, addictive, highly emotional, and definitely manipulative in many ways. It will drag your emotions through the gamut and then leave them gutted. If you are looking for a New Adult romance that will leave you burning in the darkest parts, then this is the book that you'll want to sink into. [a:Eliza Freed|7857490|Eliza Freed|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1393089740p2/7857490.jpg] does a brilliant job of illustrating just how addictive and emotionally intense a dysfunctional romance can be. Her characters shine on the pages, her writing is beautifully imaginative, and the cliffhanger will leave you gasping for more.