Numb

I felt Max’s pain. She struggles to make sense and move forward from the loss of her baby. This is intense, all consuming and heart breaking. As she flounders, she finds herself sitting by Dale’s hospital bed while he is in a coma but when he wakes, she stays away. She can’t be hurt by him again, she knows she can’t take that added pain but she stills loves him. Dale wakes up and doesn’t remember what he did to Max. He knows she was pregnant and that they had an intense and volatile connection. As Dale works to prove Max can trust him, he struggles with his memory loss and truly understanding how much he hurt Max. Max and Dale are truly incredible together. Will they be able to push past all the hurt and loss to truly embrace happiness? We get to connect with the entire Harlot’s and Vice One crews as a new threat looms as they continue to stop the human trafficking ring. Yes, intense suspense is layered on top of all the emotional angst which left my heart pounding and the tears flowing. J.M. Walker can truly gut a person.

This book tackles an incredibly difficult subject, one I've personally lived through. I found myself crying at times, angry and frustrated at others. Both characters are emotionally immature, Dale much more so. Considering their upbringing that's certainly no surprise so I understand it on that level. The world is full of messed up people finding their way. You're not going to find hearts and flowers and some Cinderella romance here. What you get is not just rough around the edges, it's sharp and jagged. Dark themes underscore their struggle and compound their grief. They walk away and come back and do it again and it will frustrate the heck out of the reader. That said, it's more real and honest than other stories out there. Love isn't always pretty, in this case it's a bit ugly. But it's still love. Going into this I hated Dale. No...I loathed him. And at the end I can't say that I like him. I don't necessarily hate him anymore either, though. I pity him and I dislike him. I pity Max but I like her. And I understood how she felt over her loss. Feeling that loss is unlike anything else, it's a confusing jumble of emotions that I found was captured well. The fact that I can read a book, still not like the characters but am eager for the next book is a testament to the authors skill. This isn't all about romance. It's about a story, a journey for two broken people making their way in the world together. I read a great many books and of those I don't remember many in detail. This is one is those books that I will never read again but that I have burned into memory and am glad I've taken the journey with them.