Review: Action-packed suspense with Tarantino style and flair
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 03 20, 2013
"Love wasn't a choice; it was an accident.  Not a climb but a fall."Selling Out by Amber Lin is another novel that I will mark as another one of my favorites for the year, thus far.  With twists and turns, surprises and shocks throughout the novel, I white-knuckled my way through the pages.  This is a book I happily and eagerly agreed to review and be a part of the blog tour based on the author alone.  I hadn't read the book description beforehand nor did I know what the content would be.  I just knew I was in for a great ride.  I had no idea I was in for a total train wreck that would consume me.  Selling Out depicts the criminal and deadly descent into Chicago's upper business class prostitution ring.  It vividly describes the criminal activity of high priced call girls and the abusive men who own and lust for them; the greed, power, and danger associated with the oldest profession in the world....and the star-crossed lovers who would try to save them all.Shelly has tried many times to escape the life she was born to live, that of a prostitute.  She wants to be free and she wants to save other young girls from the same fate she has suffered, but it isn't that easy to escape the only life you've ever known and fit into a society where everything is completely foreign.  She is the best in the business and the most requested.  She knows the business like nothing else and was trained to succeed.  What she wanted was to be free...free of her owner, her abuser, and free to love Luke, the cop who protected her but wouldn't let her get so close as to learn the truth."Luke kissed me, I ceased being the sum of my past, and he was no longer the next man in line.  I was no longer a body to be used, and he wasn't a grunting weight to use me.  In that moment, I was a woman, and he was a man.  We were lovers with no time to bind us, no secrets to thwart us, no enemies to hurt us -- but none of that was real at all."Luke was the upstanding cop who stood for justice and had his own personal reasons for wanting to protect young women from the fate of men who used and abused them for profit.  He had feelings for Shelly, but he had his secrets the same as she had her own.  He wanted to be close to her, but he had difficulty trusting her to find herself and not be the hooker she was trained to be.  He would do anything to protect and save her, including give up his life if necessary.  But he and Shelly weren't supposed to have a future together.  They were both broken souls with one common element and a desire for each other that was like chicken soup for their battered souls.  Only one thing kept them from being together."I want it to be real between us." ~ LukeNeither Luke nor Shelly felt worthy of being adored or loved, and neither knew how to love.  They saw the good in each other but had been brainwashed to only see themselves as the lowest of scum to be scraped off the bottom of a shoe.  But somehow these star-crossed lovers found a happy medium and learned to forgive, trust, live, and love.Amber Lin has written a novel with angst and humor beautifully interwoven to tell a story of erotic suspense.  There is romance there, but it is just on the edges, keeping the reader in wait until just the right time.  Written like a Tarantino movie, Selling Out is raw and primal with each scene laid out to give the reader a full on view and feel of every action and adventure of the characters involved.  When I wasn't white-knuckling my Kindle, I was laughing out loud at Shelly's sarcastic and tough girl persona.  The street wise credibility with which the book is written gives the reader a believable glimpse into victims and survivors of the sex-trade game.  I highly recommend this remarkable story to those who love the twists, gasps, and heart-thumping anxiety of action-packed suspense knowing there is a romance to be found when it doesn't seem possible.