4.5 SMOOCHES!

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SYNOPSIS:

I don’t want you.

You mean nothing to me.

I never loved you.

I turned my words into swords.

And I cut her down.

Shoved the blade in and watched her fall.

I said I’d never hurt her, and I did.

Years later, I’m faced with all the little lies, the untruths, the false realities, the damage I inflicted, when all I wanted was to indulge my obsession.

Lavender Waters is the princess in the tower. Even her name is the thing fairy tales are made of.

I used to be the one who saved her.

Over and over again.

But I don’t want to save her anymore.

I just want to pretend the lies are still the truth.

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REVIEW:

If you’re a fan of Helena Hunting’s and you’ve read her All In series, you know who Lavender Waters is and you’ve probably been pining for her story. While the All In series were lighter reading contemporary sports romances, Kody and Lavender’s story in Little Lies was decisively not, and as such, Helena made that clear by writing it under her pen name, H. Hunting. Brace yourselves, folks, this was no easy, breezy love story, and I offer my bruised, battered but now fully recovered heart to show for it.

I don’t want to give too much away here, I think readers need to go into this complicated and layered love story understanding this isn’t Helena’s typically light and amusing fare. But I think it’s precisely these kinds of stories, the ones that are so vastly different than what we have previously experienced from an author, that show readers the true range and the breadth of a writer’s storytelling abilities, and Hunting has earned my respect in this regard for incredible writing in this vividly told, complex and deeply emotional enemies-to-lovers, new adult romance.

I knew from the prologue that this was going to be an angst-fest, but this was some seriously next level angst. The kind that kicks you in the gut with its velocity and leaves you aching and breathless with it. Violet and Kody were extremely close childhood friends–like soulmate, but not old enough to recognize that close–when their relationship suffered a devastating blow. As painful as that was, it was the ensuing years of their severed connection and the loss of each other in the day-to-day living of their separate lives that fueled the anguish they both felt as these once-in-a-lifetime friends turned into enemies.

I loved Lavender from the start, that part was easy. She was fierce and loyal, and she’s been through so much yet never lost her grit and determination to face those challenges and chase her dreams. In contrast, it would have been easy to simply dislike Kody for the way he treated Lavender, but as Hunting pulled back his layers, exposing readers to his thoughts, his emotions and his pain, I found it really wasn’t quite that simple. My heart broke for this young man, and while I didn’t particularly care for the way he expressed his pain, I could still feel it coming off the page in heartbreaking waves.

Little Lies was so much more than I anticipated it would be in every single way, and my heart absolutely broke for both Lavender and Kody, and I railed at Hunting for putting them—ME!—through so much. This was no cut and dry enemies-to-lovers romance. This was an epic story of young love found too early and then going awry before time and maturity work their magic to give this tattered relationship to give them the second-chance this kind of love deserved. A heart-wrenching coming-of-age romance jam packed full of feels, Little Lies was an intensely emotional and poignant love story.  Little Lies by H. Hunting gets 4.5 smooches from me!

~Danielle Palumbo

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