Exposing The Flesh - Book Three

Another hit from Howell!

Wow - this book is intense.

In the questions above, I did select 'graphic' on the violence scale but, only because there is some that alludes to rape - and I know that can be a trigger for some readers. I actually didn't find the violence to be super graphic - intense at times though.

There is so much to say about this book, I fear that I will forget much of what I want to get down.

First of all the basics:
The cover is professional and gorgeous. Editing: nearly flawless. Spoken: overall very well. Formatting: beautiful.
Character development : larger than life, seriously. Now that I'm up to speed on this series I seriously miss the characters. I want to know what they're doing right now.

This book packs a lot of serious issues into it and I just marvel at the level of research or personal knowledge that had to come into play here because it is all done exceedingly accurately. There are suicidal tendencies and even a fudged suicidal attempt - the emotional state of the character as it is described feels very ... legit and realistic. I could actually put myself into the situation and relate with all angles of all of those involved, it is just very well done. We witness the downward spiral, some improvement, another backwards path... it is a roller coaster ride in this regard - and a really fascinating one all the while.

When Niall falls for London, there is heat and chemistry that the reader cannot help but feel a touch of. This is more than a romance - it is as if Niall has finally found that missing piece of himself and can finally move on from the demons in his past ... but habits are hard to break ... will he stop with the self loathing and self destructive behavior ? Time will tell....

You want to see someone be the hero and snap him out of it but , much like reality it is easy to see here how easy it is to lose control in any situation.. life is always more complicated than it appears to be on the surface an not everything is as easily solved as it looks.

During my time spent with this book, there was definitely lost sleep - I would behave and put the book down and go to bed when I should... only to realize that I just couldn't sleep until I knew what happened next... and so on. While I do need my sleep, I have no regrets - I am only trying to adjust to life outside of Midtown now.

While there is some heavy in this book, as discussed above, there is a big helping of the Howell humor I've come to love - the way she just casually works it into every day conversation which makes it even more fun. Reading these books I have a lot of laugh-out-loud moments. The drama is just juicy, the heat is turn up so high that I doubt it could even be measured - as the couple get to know each other in every way and a girl who was a good girl on the surface turns out to have a healthy dose of freak in her underneath that conservative-ish exterior.

There's ultimatums and attempted murder, there's violence and there's action - You'd be hard pressed to find something missing from this book.