Review: Beautifully written
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 01 29, 2014
**I received an ARC from the author in exchange for an honest review**This was a hard book for me to decipher. What I liked about the book is that it was expertly written, and the descriptive quality and wording was vivid and expressive. The characters were extremely developed and I completely understood them and got a great sense of who each person was.The story is about Josie and Tristan. Josie suffers from amnesia, which she sustained when she was 14. Days after her fathers murder, she was found lost and alone, with no clue who she was. The circumstances of her father’s death required protection for Josie, and she was put into the witness protection program and sent across the country to live in the foster care system. The book takes place when she is 22. She has grown into an introverted woman, who relies on drugs, alcohol, and sex to cope with the gruesome consequences from the events in her life.Tristan was Josie’s best friend and boyfriend at the time of her alleged death. He was devastated by her loss and ended up traveling down the wrong path in life. Tristan is not your average guy though; he has a photographic memory and has the ability to remember word for word every thing he has ever read. He is intelligent beyond reason, but throws away his potential Harvard education for a girl who’s father is a small time mobster. In an act of revenge, the girl sucks Tristan into the life, essentially ruining his potential and future, and estranging him from his family.Then fate steps in and reunites him with Josie, the girlfriend that he thought was dead. The catch of course is that she has no memory of him, but the intense emotional connection that the two share is undeniable.  Tristan and Josie’s relationship quickly evolves into a romance that begins to heal the wounds that Josie has suffered from.Thrown into the mix of this budding relationship is a mafia hit man, and a bucket load of twists and turns. There were events and things that took place that were so unexpected, I never saw some of the shockers coming at all. The book has a very satisfying ending for the most part, and the story was impeccably thought out and executed.Now the issues that I had with this book are the amount of characters that were in it. It was jam packed with supporting roles, which would have been ok, but there was great detail that was put into each characters life and history. I felt that some of the situations that were described were unnecessary, and that a lot of the third person narration of the supporting characters did nothing to add to the story. I would have much rather had the efforts dedicated to seeing more of Josie and Tristan and less of everyone else, with the acception of Monica, whose role was instrumental in Josie’s life and the ending to the book. I personally am not a fan of third person narration in books, so the style was not preferable for me. I realize that this is a personal decision so I try not to let it detract from my opinion of the story. What took away from this was the amount of detail that was invested into the other characters and the amount of characters. At one point I was reading about some guy named Frank, and I still have no clue who he was. It just got to be confusing for me. I also didn’t like that the transition from one characters narration to another’s was only divided by a paragraph, there was no other indicator that they story was shifting to a different characters life and thoughts.Aside from the character issues, this was still a great story. It featured a life long love that could not be torn apart, even by death, and separation. It was very gritty and raw when it came to the lives and pasts of Josie and Tristan. I ached for the hurt that Josie had been though. This girl became a faceless statistic associated with the foster system and she managed to survive regardless of the mountain of setbacks that she faced. Tristan was a fascinating character. His level of intelligence shined through every line of dialect that he had. He was so well written and his character was maintained to the point that he could be a real guy. The endless stream of facts that he spouted out just proved the massive amount of research that the author put into her work. With that said, the basis of the story, the execution, the relationships, and the high level of unexpected plot twists made this author stand out from the crowd. I am certainly excited to see what comes out of the brain of Season Vining in the future, I am confident that she is a great new author and is one that I will keep an eye on.