Seven years ago, my life changed forever. One accident and the person I saw in the mirror no longer resembled the woman I used to be. I was lost and confused inside my own body. I felt alone and disconnected from the world, carrying the incredible weight of guilt and loss that wasn't even mine to harbor.
Then fate led me to Leo James. He taught me that crazy could be perfectly normal and it shouldn't hurt to breathe. Don't get me wrong. Leo isn't perfect. He has his own cross to bear, and the truth is, that might be why I fell for him in the first place. But despite everything he does for me, learning to forgive myself is infinitely harder than overlooking the flaws of another.
Now, the secrets and lies of our past have begun to dictate our future—threatening to ruin us before we get the chance to try. Perhaps we were cursed from the start. Or maybe, just maybe, the remnants of our fractured lives will fit together to form one whole, where love isn’t questioned and being happy is…well, easy.
Can a second broken soul be enough to fill the voids of my own? Or will such scarred pasts prove too much for our love alone to overcome?
MY THOUGHTS:
5 out of 5 stars
Before I get officially started with my review, I need to put this out there:
Dear Aly Martinez...my birthday is in February and I want Leo. Or Christmas. Christmas would also work. Or tomorrow. I have no issue with tomorrow. You just let me know when.
I'm not even joking. It is like when you were creating Leo, you crawled inside my head and picked every single one of my weaknesses. I'm pretty sure you have ruined me for any other contemporary romance heroes. Dark, dirty and flawed...I mean, hellllllo Leo.
Ahem. So back to the review of the story.
There MAY have been a bit of trepidation on my part going into this story...you see, I have a tendency to hold grudges longer than is probably healthy and I loathed Sarah in Changing Course. And yes, I know that Stolen Course sheds light on her situation, but still. I haven't hated a character like I hate Sarah since reading Gone Girl. There may have been a few WTFs uttered when finishing Among the Echoes. Okay, so maybe more than a few.
BUT...I love Aly and I have faith in Aly and then Celeste from The Book Hookup tweeted me about Leo and I knew I couldn't put it off any longer.
My plan was to simply pretend Sarah was somebody else.
Y'all...this may be my favorite book of the series. If you haven't read the first books in this series, I'm not going to rehash what brings Sarah and Leo together, but once they are together their chemistry is undeniable. But it isn't just the intense attaction between Sarah and Leo that makes their relationship work, it is the fact that they are both broken. Yes, I say "are" because what the two of them had experienced in their separate lives are events nobody could ever let go. The scars are long. The scars are deep. And the scars are permanent.
That being said, that doesn't mean that Sarah and Leo have to let the scars define them.
And I think that is what I love most about this book. Aly Martinez doesn't write a story that erases the past simply because the future happens. She writes a story that allows a future in that happens because of the past. What Sarah did and what Leo experienced doesn't just go away because they are in love. Actually, their emotions bring everything closer to the surface and it isn't sunshine and rainbows.
I loved this story. It had everything I look for -- intensity, emotions, unf, humor and an ending that fits the characters. This whole series and Beyond the Echoes have a permanent place on my Kindle because I know I will be rereading them...I refuse to say goodbye to these characters. And I can't read what Aly Martinez gives us next.
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