Review: Angst-filled erotic romance
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 09 24, 2013
LET IT GO is an angst-filled erotic romance with deeply damaged leads and flashbacks of rape and torture that may turn off a lot of readers.  I, however, was compelled to follow the romance journey no matter how difficult because the damaged leads more than deserved their HEA.Eli and Creed have been rodeo enemies since their early teens but their brawling lands them in jail where the local judge sentences them to work Eli's ranch together.  Now the two are stuck on a lonely Florida ranch with their secret attraction and pasts haunting them even as their enemy launches a surprise attack.Eli and Creed were characters that kept me thinking about them when I had to take a break reading this book.  Eli's uncontrolled anger has him living on a razor's edge and Creed's troubled past haunts him in ways he can't or won't acknowledge.  Their romance is bittersweet as they start as enemies who, like fighters, dance around each other and their mutual attraction.  They're flawed characters who do stupid things to themselves and each other as they spend time together and I had many moments where I wanted to shake some sense into both of them.  But all this added up to unique characters that I came to really care about. Their epilogue was outstanding and offered the emotional closure I desperately needed from the emotionally intense story.The romance here is erotic and I acknowledge being sexually uncomfortable when Creed's past would suddenly rear its ugly head.  Eli sees Creed as a person, not a sex object, and challenges Creed to see their sex life differently than his past abusers.  This isn't always easy to read but it has a deeply emotional intensity that made it work for me.I acknowledge that this book isn't for every reader.  The flashbacks include violent rape, torture and physical abuse that should turn readers' stomachs.  I suspect many romance readers won't be able to tolerate the explicit sexual violence and I too had a difficult time.  But in my opinion the sexual violence wasn't titillating but instead forced readers to see firsthand what made Creed and Eli the difficult people they were. Do I think fewer scenes may have done the job adequately? Possibly.  However, the abuser links Creed and Eli in a macabre tableau that comes to a head in the present portion of the book and the plot revolves around this.LET IT GO isn't a light romance novel I can recommend to every reader but for readers looking for a complicated tale of love, acceptance and abuse survival, this is a compelling story unlike anything else I've read.Reviewed by J9for TheRomanceReviews.com