Review: "Intellectual erotica"!!!
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 04 23, 2014
The storyline of this book was pretty straightforward:  Bailey and Jess are best friends who have grown up together.  Jess' older brother, Darren, spends a lot of time with them and he and Bailey have had a big crush on each other for years.  During vacation when they're 21, Bailey drives herself and Jess home from a bar at night and unfortunately loses control of the car, causing Jess to be killed.  Turns out Bailey is legally drunk and ends up going to prison for vehicular manslaughter.Fast forward 6 or so years - Bailey is released from prison and moves back to the small town she grew up in to be near her widowed mother.  She struggles to try to fit back in to normal life with her prison record, weekly meetings with her parole officer, inability to drive due to her conviction and ostracism by the townspeople.  Unfortunately Darren feels it's his life's mission to make her as miserable as possible because he hasn't come close to forgiving her for "killing his sister".This book raised a lot of questions for me that I hadn't considered before.  When I read about someone driving drunk and killing another person I automatically start judging the person who did it and don't have a lot of sympathy for them.  This book let me see the other side - a kid made a stupid decision that turned out to be life-altering for a lot of other people. How much should that person have to suffer?  If they've done their jail time and are remorseful for their mistake, should they be forgiven?  I started wondering if, in cases like Bailey's, wouldn't probation be enough?  She has to live with what she did for the rest of her life and that seems like a worse punishment than putting her in prison.  Plus when I thought about how it destroyed her parents and she wasn't able to finish college because of her sentence, it made me see how a prison sentence could be a worse option than just probation, not just for her but others and also for society.Probably the first half of this book I hated all the characters - Darren, for being so hateful toward Bailey, Bailey, for not standing up for herself, and all the townsfolk who were so awful to her.There was a lot more to this book than just these heavy issues.  The sexual chemistry between Bailey and Darren was OFF THE CHARTS SMOKING HOT!!!!  Elizabeth Finn does an excellent job writing erotica and this book won't disappoint.Excellent writing + a unique storyline x sizzling bedroom scenes = an awesome read!!!