Still Beating

My emotion, my mental state was all over the place as I race to finish this book. I could not put it down. I put it down and my head went “What will happen to this two? Will she be okay? Will he be okay? Will they be okay? How will they escape? How? When? How will they move on past THIS?” Yeah, I was consumed. I even continue to read it while on video call with my sisters.

The writing, the plot, the character development – all comes together eloquently, meaningfully. My heart breaks for one minute and then I feel like shaking the FMC so bad, like I want her to buck the fuck up! But she was traumatised. I feel like giving one huge bitch slap to the MMC and then I feel like I want to hug him and tell him it's okay.

God.

I'm gonna read other book by this author to see if this is a fluke. But fluke or not, this is one hell of a story.

3/5

This book could've been 100 pages shorter by cutting out all of the back and forth miscommunication towards the end & i would've probably given it 4 stars

My first thoughts were what am I reading? Someone recommended this to pull me out of a slow reading month.
It was thrilling, and dark. It had jealousy and forbidden romance. It was 4/5 stars for me.

Look up trigger warnings. (Rape/Kidnapping/Serial Killer)

4,5 stars

I borrowed this book with KU and listened to the audio version that I purchased while I simultaneously read it. It was very scary at first. It was hard to put down this book! I fell asleep at 85% because it was almost 2 a.m. and in the morning I couldn't find my reading glasses because they were all tangled up in my blankets. I gave this book 4 stars. I really wish GoodReads would start a half star option. Definitely would suggest this book to those who like romantic thrillers.

your sister's fiance realizes he has feelings for you on a drunk night out by accidentally kissing you ❌

your sister's fiance realizes he's in love with you after being forced to r*pe you ✅

the sister cheating on Dean was so unnecessary

This story is HEAVY (kidnapping & rape) I still recommend it though. Jennifer's writing lets the love of their story shine through the heavy parts

Well this was intense, my god. The first 60% just flies by, I read it in one sitting and only stopped as my son woke up from a nap!

I was just obsessed with this story, it's brutal and heart wrenching but completely beautiful by the end. One thing I actually really loved was that they weren't magically fine and together as soon as it was over, they were broken and needed time apart to heal and then eventually come together in a healthy way. It just felt like a more realistic view on how someone would need to recover from something as horrific as what Cora and Dean went through.

I would definitely recommend this to anyone, just take care and look up trigger warnings as this covers many and is very dark.

Messed up.

Truly messed up and twisted, toxic, romantic, raw, messy racey, beautiful and more wrapped up into one gripping book!

What starts out as a horrifically disturbing scenario turns into a beautiful and messy story of human strength, perseverance, connection and love.

Great read!

I have put this book off for so long because I thought I would not enjoy it. I also picked up a highly anticipated dark ‘romance' that everyone just loved and I absolutely hated it and I wish I could go back and unread it and I felt like people were saying the same things about this book as they were about that previous book. So don't ask me why I even picked this up to begin with but I did and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I quite enjoyed the way Jennifer Hartman writes. Her writing style flows nicely together. I wouldn't say there was any morally gray characters in this book. I thought Dean was actually a stand-up guy, not morally grey at all! in fact he was fantastic. Loved him. Not sure I really like the female main character, Cora. Pretty sure I don't like her sister who after a couple weeks thought they should just get over it. Was not expecting a happy ending so that was a pleasant surprise. Probably if this ended on a bad note I would never read this book again but it ended on a good note and I'm all about happy ending so that's important to me I definitely reread.