Fading (Fading #1) by E.K. Blair

Title: Fading
Series: Fading #1
Author: E.K. Blair
Genre: Romance/Dark/New Adult

Maturity Rating: 17+
*WARNING*: TRAUMA TRIGGERS
Overall Rating:

My Quickie Synopsis: Candace Parker is entering her final year at college and she's excited for the opportunity to continue her dream of becoming a professional ballerina. However, a brutal assault at the beginning of the school year leaves her broken and struggling to pick up the pieces. Ryan Campbell, the owner of a nearby bar, meets Candace by chance and sparks fly between the pair. Ryan wants nothing more than to be the rock that she needs, but his own demons may doom their relationship before it even starts.

(Enjoyment) Factor:
This is not a book for enjoyment, but rather inspiration. I'm going to be blunt; Fading is a story about a rape and how it affects a young woman. You'll see her spiral down, but you'll also see her build herself back up. It's incredibly moving, and extremely honest to the point where you may be left just slightly raw.

Fading is not an easy read by any means; it is profoundly sad at times.

Even through the dark subject material, Ms. Blair was able to keep me hooked onto the story. I wanted to keep reading for the sake of Candace. I wanted to see her obtain as much closure as she could, and I wanted to know that she'd be okay. The only issue I had was the slight twinge of disbelief some of the happy coincidences caused.




Technical Rating: 

Character Building:
I can only imagine how exhausting it must have been to write these characters into being. Both Candace and Ryan are beautifully complex both individually and together. Ms. Blair does an incredible job of making sure that Candace's character truly isn't defined by her assault. There are multiple layers that are explored; we see everything from how she works, her goals, her interactions with her friends, her family dynamics, and how she falls in love and learns to trust. Ryan is just as well-thought out as a character, and even though the focus isn't on him, you still understand everything you need to about him. However, I'm glad Ms. Blair is devoting a book to his perspective.

Plot Strength:
The plot in Fading is concrete, easy to follow and works very well with the characters. I'm not sure what more you could ask for in a book! I have seen reviews that fault the author for having the plot revolve around the assault, but, in my opinion, that's the heart of the book. Should a reader fault Twilight for revolving around the concept of vampires and werewolves?

Sincerity:
Even though I'm not entirely satisfied with how Ms. Blair decides to handle the outcome for the rapist, I can't say that it actually harms overall feel of Fading. There was never a point in time where I thought that these events and these characters didn't fit within the realm of the book. The entirety of the story is full of heartbreaking sincerity.

Editing:
The editing gets an A from me.

Pacing:
The pacing was perfect for the story. The romance wasn't rushed and the story flowed quite naturally. There's a bit of formulaic writing in the book in terms of pacing, but Ms. Blair does it well; it doesn't detract from Fading at all.

My Icing on Top:
I usually try to avoid books that are this heavy for a variety of reasons, but I recently purchased Devour, which is an anthology featuring 8 full length new adult novels. It was only $0.99 and it benefits First Candle. In other words, I couldn't help myself; eight full books AND the profits go to a charity? Sold! I just didn't actually read any of the book summaries. So sue me; I went in for the surprise element!
This book is not a romance of the "bodice-ripper" genre, but rather a story of survival and love. That being said, don't be scared off from reading Fading, even if it isn't your normal cup of tea. As a matter of fact, I encourage you to read this book, or any book that goes into the devastating aftermath of sexual assault. As the end of the book states, "Every 2 minutes, someone in the U.S. is sexually assaulted. Approximately 2/3 of assaults are committed by someone known to the victim. And only 46% of assaults are reported to the police." That's just in the US alone; can you honestly afford to not seek to understand how this affects everyone? So, what are you waiting for? Start reading!

Check out my informal review on Goodreads!

Happy reading!

-K

Avoiding Commitment (Avoiding #1) by K.A. Linde

Title: Avoiding Commitment
Series: Avoiding #1
Author: K.A. Linde
Genre: New Adult/Romance

Maturity Rating: 17+
Rating: 4.5/5

My Quickie Synopsis: Years after their tumultuous relationship ended, Jack calls his ex Lexi, requesting that she assist him in quite a bizarre favor. Jack, penultimate playboy, is settling down, and he needs Lexi to convince his bride-to-be that he's the marrying kind. As you can imagine, this creates a plethora of complications for our heroine Lexi. Will she be able to be around Jack again without falling back into old habits?

Character Building: 1/1
I am not going to lie; I strongly dislike these characters. There aren't many redeeming qualities bouncing around within the story for our heroine or our hero and it makes it hard to want to truly connect with them. But regardless of wanting to distance myself from these characters, I was still immersed in their story. No matter how messed up Lexi and Jack show themselves to be, they still feel real. My only hope is that they grow in the coming books, because this book is already pushing my limits at how much ridiculousness I can handle!

Plot Strength: 1/1
It's not hard to understand what's going on in this story. It's pretty basic in its delivery, and the plot points all add up. The twists that Ms. Linde creates are well done and I think that they definitely aid in the growth of both Lexi and Jack. The ending makes sense and gives me hope that the series is headed in a good direction. Fingers crossed!

Sincerity: 0.5/1
There's a part of me that believes that people really are this self-centered and horrible. But there's also a part of me that doesn't think that circumstances could reach such a height of ridiculous awfulness and glaring coincidences. I struggled with how everything perfectly fell apart. In a sense, the story felt a little too manufactured at times, as if Ms. Linde believed that in order to give her readers the idea of how terrible everything was, she had to overwhelm them with it.

Editing: 1/1
The book is well written and very easy to read in terms of its grammatical quality.

Pacing: 1/1
I think the pacing was perfect for this book. There was a lot to delve into, especially when it came to building up the characters and their messy relationships. I can't imagine the pace being any quicker because as a reader, you'd miss out on a lot of the little subtle interactions that make the book. If the pacing was any slower, I might have had a heart attack because of all the angst. Truly.

My Icing on Top:

How I feel about this story right about now.

As a quick aside, I am also on Goodreads. However, if you happen to stumble across my profile there, you'll see that there are times when my ratings there and my ratings here on my blog don't match up. The reason for this is that I try to make my blog reviews as objective as possible. But on Goodreads, I generally rate a book as soon as I'm done with it, so it's more of a gut feeling than a true, thoughtful rating.
My gut feeling for this book? Two stars. No lie! I abhorred how this book made me feel. But that's the point. This book is not a feel good book. It's not the misunderstood hot guy or the strong heroine that many readers have come to expect in this particular genre. It's gritty and it's messy and it's probably going to piss you off more than you thought humanly possible.
If you can get past that (or hey, maybe you love this kind of thing), there's a lot of good writing underneath. As I said before, my only hope is that these characters show and sustain real growth; otherwise, I really might not be able to carry on with their story. I had my fill of angst in high school and college, thank you!

Happy reading!

-K

Unravel by Calia Read

Title of Book: Unravel
Author: Calia Read
Genre: New Adult/Romance/Mystery

Maturity Rating: 17+
*WARNING*: THIS BOOK CONTAINS TRAUMA TRIGGERS. 
Rating: 5/5

My Quickie Synopsis: Naomi Carradine finds herself institutionalized at a psych ward after a series of unfortunate events. She's sure that she doesn't belong there, but she can't seem to unravel the mystery surrounding her circumstances.

Character Building: 1/1
Well hello there, new author! (Well, at least new to me!) Ms. Read takes on quite the challenge in making these characters believable. You sympathize with the plight of Naomi and find yourself right along side her trying to figure out what in the world could possibly be happening to her. Lachlan is adorable, Max is steamy and Lana provides the perfect balance to Naomi.

Plot Strength: 0.5/1
There are definitely occasions when it's hard to follow what's going on in the story. It can be a little all over the place. However, that being said, I think that it was partially intentional in trying to portray the instability in Naomi. While I understand the concept, I don't think it helped the story mesh very well and detracted from the amazing book that Ms. Read has created.

Sincerity: 1/1
Unfortunately, this book is steeped in believable situations. I only say unfortunately because some of the issues at hand are extremely dark. Ms. Read handles them well, and she does it with tact, so the difficulty of the topics add to the overall story instead of detract or distract.

Editing: 1/1
I am a firm believer than an editor should not only be reviewing grammatical issues, but they should help an author achieve a better flow. Honestly, I could take off points here for those moments of disorganization I mentioned earlier. However, as I already took off points from plot strength, I will give a full score to editing. I'm not heartless, I suppose :)

Pacing: 1/1
This is another one of those "stay up all night to finish" kind of books. Even if you think you know what's going on, you're going to want to keep reading until you get that confirmation. The only downfall of the pacing comes at the end. Once the mystery is fully revealed, the rest of the book starts to feel very stiff. But the climax is so intense, that I think that it's inevitable for the book to take on that impression.

Bonus! Thought-Provoking: 0.5/0.5
I can't truly get into all of the ways that this book is thought-provoking without giving away major plot points. I will say this though: Never judge a person too quickly because you never know what they're going through or what they've already endured.

My Icing on Top:
I would advise any prospective readers to avoid spoilers like the plague. This book relies heavily on its "AHA" moment, and if you already know what's going on, I truly think that the book would lose part of its appeal. Also, please heed my warning! I was highly upset that this book did not come with a trigger warning. I went into it reading it as a normal psycho mystery, but there are definitely darker elements there that may prove to be too much for some readers.

If you're looking to add a little mystery to your book line-up and can handle some darker elements, give Unravel a try! Happy reading!

-K