This was like a SOLID 5 star read until the majority of the book became '2 years of purgatory for a lifelong child abuse victim who made one mistake.' Like, yes, it was a bad mistake, but it mostly just felt like a really great love story, and then about 70% of punishment and misery.

Also, the characters do not spend the majority of this book with each other, and I think that's significant in a romance. Especially when that time apart is small moments of hope amongst trauma after trauma after trauma after trauma, and people being mad at someone who never got therapy for like, a life of child abuse and decisions rooted in child abuse. Even when Crick is severely injured and maybe going to die, Deacon uses guilt-tripping language instead of language rooted primarily in love re: wanting him to survive. I.e. 'Fighting hard? He goddamned better be.'

So Deacon started out very likeable to me, and just became incredibly unlikeable by the end. Crick started off earnest and desperate for love, and is still earnest and desperate for love at the end, just...with a partner who's been angry at him for two years for a mistake, and who says he's over his anger when he clearly isn't. The first words Deacon says to his severely wounded partner after apparently being 'clean and shiny' and no longer angry? 'Good to see you stopped slacking and finally got your ass home.' Would've liked some genuine apologies from Deacon, after 2 years of war-purgatory for Crick lmao. Thank GOD Deacon got therapy. Never met a character who needed it more, which is saying something. He behaves in untrustworthy, unstable and unloving ways by the end of the book. He is at his most loving in the beginning. We find out that not only is Deacon not a god (which, you know, he never really came across as one), he's not even a very loving, forgiving human being with a capacity to recover from his own trauma. In the end, Crick feels so guilty - STILL - that he says that his mistake to leave for the military when he thought Deacon was going to cut him off, was more painful for Deacon, than Crick's ENTIRE life of childhood abuse, that caused him to think Deacon was going to leave him in the first place. Those are the words of a shamed, guilty, unhappy man who has no sense of perspective. And Deacon just accepts that. Without question.

Anyway, all of this made the ending feel not happy at all, but tentatively hopeful at best. It's beautifully written, but it will make the process for those actually familiar with child abuse and similar all the more painful because of it. This reads like hurt-no-comfort, at least for me. ( )

Amy Lane manages to do something I usually dislike and make me love it. Sometimes it was a little confusing - I think some of the formatting for the ebook was a little off - but it was interesting, so I didn't care. What she did was a little back and forth with the timeline, Crick or Deacon remembering this or that while experiencing something related somehow. Well done. Meaningful.

Thinking about the whole story now, it's very cool to see how these characters grew and yet, in essence, stayed the same good, loving, fiercely loyal people they started as, despite all the overwhelming, horrid things thrown at them.

This is an awesome story. Very curious now what she'll do with book 2... ( )

Loved the book!
Once I got into it, I could NOT put it down. ( )

A bit less humor and more pathos than the (now) typical Amy Lane offering; she really throws every misfortune imaginable onto the two poor MCs (rather reminding me of the adventures of Mrs. Shakespeare Smith: “ . . . in one short afternoon their family was the scene of births, marriages, deaths, floods, earthquakes, tea-parties, and balloon ascensions.”)! However, for those who like that sort of thing (and I do), this is the sort of thing you’ll like. ( )

Talk about a book that will totally put you through the ringer and have you wondering just what is going to happen right up to the end. This is the second book by Amy Lane that I've read, and I remain very impressed by her work (I have a friend who keeps recommending I read more, and I can see why he likes her work so much).

Crick and Deacon - the two of them are just incredible as characters, but all of the secondary characters are amazing, too. Ms. Lane has created an incredible and rich world here that left me laughing, crying, smiling, and worrying (mostly worrying, let's face it). I can wait to learn more about it in the next book in the series. ( )