5 Smooches!
Synopsis
Kane and Helene were the best of friends until a nightmare devastated them… Hopes were destroyed, dreams shattered, a budding teenage love torn to pieces. Eleven years later their lives are nothing like they once were. Time has changed them … and not for the better.
Helene is smart, driven, and accomplished—her education and achievements a smoke screen hiding the frigid and fragile child wounded long ago.
Kane is equally obsessed with his coping mechanisms—fighting … drinking … screwing … compulsively destroying himself one vice at a time.
When their paths collide again, their past becomes an obstacle no coping mechanism in the world can protect them from. But confronting the past so they can heal in the present is no easy task. Can Kane reach Helene and recapture what used to burn so warmly between them, or will his own self destructive demons pull her into his hell?
A woman determined to look forward. A man always looking back. A love desperate to be restored.
“You’re the brightest, warmest star in my universe. You’ll never be less than everything to me.”
WARNING: This book contains darker subject matter and violent content that may be difficult for some readers.
Review
This is a second chance at first love kind of story, but with emotionally gut wrenching twists. Seventeen and best friends, unlikely friends, but still best of friends. The attraction was there and they had all the time in the world to explore that. Life has other plans for them though when that option is cruelly torn from them as they are forced into a gruesome experience that will follow them for the rest of their lives.
Their story isn’t an easy one, it’s the kind of one that will possibly rip you apart. This story, their relationship was so fragile. You get sucked in almost immediately. I’m a smut addict, and don’t get me wrong the sex was hot but most of the time I felt like I was imposing on such an intimate, fragile thing that should only be shared between them two. I have never felt like that reading a book! It wasn’t awkward or cringey, it was just something special between these two. This book was just really emotional in so many ways. This story needed to be handled with extreme care, especially surrounding the subject matter and I think Elizabeth Finn done just that. Kane gutted me. I’ve never wanted to hug and protect someone so much, never mind a fictional character. These two were really put through the test of life, and what a cruel test it was. There was the theme of philosophy running through this story and it surprised me how much it interested me and how much I liked it. And I did really like it, until I didn’t, until it really got me thinking and I wanted to scream at the theories and how it wasn’t fair! I was glued to this all day, it’s a story that will stick out for me amongst the others and even though it emotionally drained me in ways, the ending made up for every bit of what the characters had been through. I’m having a major book hangover!!
