Lead Me Not by A. Meredith Walters Review

5 Smooches!

Synopsis

In this dangerously sexy novel from the New York Times bestselling author of Find You in the Dark, a straight-laced college student meets a handsome but enigmatic stranger who lures her into an underground club scene, where she finds it difficult to resist temptation

Aubrey Duncan understands loss. She knows what rock bottom looks like, and she is determined to crawl back up to the top after the sudden death of her younger sister. She blames herself for her part in the tragedy, convinced that she could have done something, anything, to help her.

In her effort to gain redemption, Aubrey starts fresh at Longwood University and facilitates an addiction support group, hoping she can support someone else in the way she failed her sister. But what she doesn’t count on is an all-consuming fascination with group member Maxx Demelo, a gorgeous, blond, blue-eyed enigma who hides dark secrets behind a carefully constructed mask. He only reveals what he wants others to see. But Aubrey glimpses another Maxx hidden below the surface—a Maxx who is drowning in his own personal hell.

As Aubrey and Maxx develop an attraction too intense to ignore, he pulls her into the dark underbelly of the city club scene, where she is torn by her desire to save him and an inexplicable urge to join him in his downward spiral. Worst of all, she is beginning to love everything she should run away from—a man who threatens to ignite in her a fire that could burn her alive…

Review

I absolutely loved this book so much.  This is my very first time reading A. Meredith Walters and I was blown away.  Lead Me Not was gritty, dark, raw, and sexy.  Sometimes I get this ache in my belly reading.  It is the one where you know what should happen but you don’t want it to.  The one where the angst is almost too much.  The story is almost too overwhelming.  I love being at that almost point.  I love that ache in my belly.  I love feeling so incredibly attached and devoted to the characters I am reading.  Lead Me Not gave me all those feelings.  It was simply breath taking.

Lead Me Not is really a story of addiction; how it starts, who it affects in our lives, and ultimately how it destroys us.  Aubrey lost her sister to drugs.  She wants to devote her life to helping others who suffer from addiction, but when she meets Maxx, she knows that she wants to do more than help him.  She cannot seem to stay away from him, no matter the cost, and Maxx is in just as deep.

Their love story was simply gut wrenching until the very end.  Maxx was so insanely needy and Aubrey wanted so badly to be needed.  You just know the whole time that it isn’t healthy but want so badly for them to work through it.  I wanted to badly for Aubrey to save Maxx.

“She filled me with anticipation and something else entirely-a desire to be something better.”

Besides the angst filled story of Maxx addicted to drugs and Aubrey addicted to helping Maxx, you get a good dose of mystery.  The paintings, the underground raves, the other women, the best friends; it all blends so well to make such a mesmerizing story.  It captured me at page one and kept me turning the pages, reading it all in one sitting.

The book was written SO well.  Meredith’s writing is so eloquent and emotion provoking.  The ending.  Well, I don’t really know how to feel about it.  It was right but wrong.  It was sad but happy.  I do know that I cannot wait until 2015!

“I’ve been waiting my entire life for you.”

“I want this, forever,”

Amie

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