Reviewed by Cocktails and Books on
When we first meet Kate Alexander, she's inside a CAT scan and trying to convince herself not to freak out. From those moments of trying to maintain her sanity and finally being released from inside her plastic tomb, her life spirals out of control. Through the death of her "husband" she finds out that the short 4 day coma she thought she was in from a car accident was more like 18 months. She's determined to find out what happened to her and why her "husband" kept it a secret from her. She packs up herself and her young son and heads to San Francisco.
While Kate is apprehensive about what she might find, she has this driving need to know why she was lied to and what it could all mean. She never thought she would uncover such a huge web of deception or that it would unleash the tsunami of hurt, anger, resentment and lust that it does. She has a husband and a young daughter who most of the time acted as if they wanted nothing to do with her and still no understanding of why all this happened to her. As a reader, you're hurt when Kate is hurting and hoping she can find a way to put her life back together given everything she's learned.
Ryan is a man you equally wants to get down and dirty with while shaking and screaming at him. He's a man who had his entire world taken away from him when he thought he lost his wife in a plan crash five years before. The only way to make it through the day was to lock all his feelings away. The only problem was, the minute he sees Kate and recognizes her for his dead wife, he unleashes those feelings on her with disastrous results (especially since they weren't exactly feelings of love that he was cramming down her throat). This would be when you wanted to shake him and scream at him. It was like he couldn't see past his own feelings to think about how all of this must be for Kate. He just kept taking things out on her, as if she had done all of this on purpose.
Things weren't easy for Kate and Ryan. When Ryan was finally able to direct his anger and resentment to the right place, he did a complete 180 with Kate and went into protection mode. Now that he had her back, he wasn't going to let her go. Now he smothered her and kept things from her...for her own good. When that blew up, Ryan was left wondering how he was going to cope if he lost her again..this time because of his own stupid mistakes. They definitely had a mountain of emotional issues to deal with, but it came down to love and letting go of the past.
The path the story took to get to who did this to Kate and why was full of twists and turns. I honestly never even suspected the villain and still couldn't believe it, even when I read the name three times (just to make sure). It was masterfully played out and left you with that feeling that justice had definitely been served.
Wonderfully written with characters who's emotional turmoil seemed to jump off the page and grab you.
Reading updates
- Started reading
- 15 January, 2012: Finished reading
- 15 January, 2012: Reviewed