Caught in Us (Lost, #3)

by Layla Hagen

[cornerfolds]

Early this year I read Withering Hope by Layla Hagen and fell in love with it! So when I was contacted with a chance to review another book by the same author, I jumped at it! Caught in Us is the third in a series that I haven't read, but it can also be read as a standalone new adult love story.

Dani and Damon are the two main characters of this romance and the setup is a familiar one: good girl meets bad boy. To be honest, my initial thought was that this was Beautiful Disaster (which I despised) done right! While Damon is a bad boy, he isn't a jerk and he treats people, including Dani, with decency. I really liked both these characters! Dani wasn't "too" good to the point where it was annoying and I was able to easily sympathize with her difficult home life. Damon also had a really rough background that made his situation believable. I also enjoyed the secondary characters, especially James! I think I'd like to have a big brother like him.

The story is really broken into two parts - high school and college. Shockingly, I really enjoyed the high school parts best. It didn't actually feel like high school to me, but maybe that's just because I was extremely sheltered and didn't even date when I was Dani's age. Either way, I loved the forbidden romance story conveyed in the first part of the book.

The second half was where it started to unravel a little for me. If there's one thing I cannot stand, it's a character making the decision about what's best for the other on their own. Breakups "because it's better for you" really get under my skin. But I digress. A villain is also a big part of the second half and it honestly just felt unnecessary. It was a great story even without the added drama of the bad guy. Still, it all worked out in the end and I did like the way everything came together.

But my biggest issue with Caught in Us was the dialogue. As I've said already, I really enjoyed the other book I read by Layla Hagen! But the dialogue here was just... off. It was almost too formal and I found it really unbelievable that anyone actually talked that way.

Overall, this was a good story. I didn't love it nearly as much as I loved Withering Hope, but survival stories are probably more my thing. I'd definitely recommend this to fans of contemporary romance!

Actual rating: 3.5 stars

//I received this book from the author in exchange for an honest review//