Review: 4.5 stars - great fast paced read
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 04 16, 2014
I liked This Wicked Rush more than I anticipated. After reading the novella, I wasn’t sure I was going to like Gabe all that much, no matter how much I sympathized with Caitlin’s situation. I was relieved to find the feelings I struggled with in One Wild Night were not repeated. Initially I was hesitant to love this, not just because of my feelings after One Wild Night, but also because I couldn’t imagine Gabe and Caitlin’s activities not catching up to them and blowing back on their families.Caitlin can’t catch a break. The 20 year old high school dropout has been working 2 jobs and struggling to keep her 3 brothers and niece fed, clothed, and housed for the last three years. Her father is less than useless, avoiding home, spending his meager disability check before it can go to caring for his children. When she connects with Gabe, he offers her a way to lessen her burden and find some hope that things will get better. The only problem is it takes illegal activities to find that relief.Gabe, the handsome boy who used to goof off in the seat behind Caitlin in study hall, sweeps in with a plan to perform Robin Hood like acts, tipping the scales of lawbreakers and monsters who have gotten away with their crimes to help Caitlin afford to go back to school and raise her family. I spent much of the book trying to figure out what his game was. He is a rich kid with a trust fund, yet he feels the need to steal from others? But as he continues his plans with Caitlin, there are hints that something else is going on in his decision making process, and he is feeling things he refuses to acknowledge.I loved Caitlin’s siblings and niece. She was so devoted to them that she had given up everything she might have been if she had stayed in school. But to save them from foster care, she gave it up, and never complained or let them know they were anything but the most important thing to her. Watching Gabe interact with them alsoI read this waiting for the other shoe to drop. Would it be Gabe’s secrets or something to do with one of their robberies? Until it happened I wasn’t sure which way the story would go, and that anticipation kept me reading with rapt attention. The tension provided by the illegal activity adds to the plot movement nicely, in addition to the progression of the relationship between Gabe and Caitlin.As the first in a new series, this does end with a doozy of a cliff. It almost looked like there would be some resolution, but a big piece of information was dropped at the end that left a lot of unanswered questions for One Perfect Love. This was a fast paced read that kept me moving forward from the time I started until there were no more pages to turn. It was not always an easy read, but completely engrossing and challenging in the best possible way.Thanks to Jessie Evans for providing me with a complimentary copy in return for an honest review.