Review: Ms. Weaver has done it again, and this time she's given us Cole Walker. And Bentley. A dark, gritty read, yet filled with hope.
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 05 27, 2014
5 bad boy I’m so in love starsYou guys, you want this book. Author Paige Weaver has done it again, and this time she has given us Cole Walker. He’s a bad boy with a dark and gritty life, but even with all his flaws he still will draw you in.  Samantha, who also hasn’t had an easy life growing up, is something else too. I found myself always rooting for them.I like to talk about the storyline in the first part of my review, and I’m going to do that here too, but I want to give you a little background first. These characters did not have it easy, and while we see this all the time in New Adult stories, I feel like you should know Paige had a lot of exposure to kids that actually lived like this, so the entire story had a more personal feel to it for me.“This one hit close to home because while in college I worked with boys in a juvenile detention center (my degree/background is in Criminology/Law). It was sad what kind of family life they had and what crimes they committed to be placed in prison. In my mind it went back to their upbringing/environment. I wanted to write something gritty that showed that side of life that many of us don’t know.”~Paige Weaver on her connection to the dark and gritty lives of the characters in Sweet DestructionI felt the desperation in this book, of how awful it was to be in the situation where life looked so bleak. Then when I learned Paige wrote about it from a more “first hand” experience it made the story resonate with me even more. It wasn’t pretty, and to think that it actually happens made me sad. Really sad. But, this story is full of hope, hope that will have you turning the page because even though Cole, Samantha, and Bentley had been dealt a bad hand and they didn’t always make the right decisions, sometimes it was the best they could do. I just kept hoping that they could crawl out of the cycle of being kept down, to become something more than victims to poverty and drugs/alcohol addiction. Just read it, and you too will be cheerleaders for Cole and Samantha (and Bentley!).The push and pull chemistry with Cole and Samantha was written just the way I love. Paige nailed the chemistry. Nailed it. It was like she wrote the book for me! And that’s what really counts in a book for me because I know how hard that is to do. There were some lines in the story that were smokin’, but I don’t want to spoil so just read it to find out. ;)While the sex was hot, the love was real. I felt and understood Cole and Samantha’s hesitancy to commit to each other, which is hard to do with words, but seemed natural and the writing was effortless. Their relationship finally played out as they each came to terms with the fact that being together was a actually good thing. Cole was blazing, impulsive, really strong, and really tortured, and he came across as so true for me. It was the characteristic “being tortured” that slowly brought out the gentle in him. And it was Sam who did that. Sam was always trying her best, but sometimes kind of floundered, which made her human in my eyes. She had moments of immaturity, but then again she was only 19. I adored her.Plus, like the Promise Me Series, Paige has given us a fantastic cast of secondary characters that turn out to really not be so secondary to some of us, *cough like Bentley *cough* but that’s Celeste’s story for another day. Ok, not really, who am I kidding? I want to talk about him now. I adored Cole Walker, but I actually really want to know Bentley. He is full of secrets, protective, dangerous, reckless, HOT, tall, loves sex….and I love him.I told Paige I needed a Bentley book and this was her reply:“Even though Bentley’s pretty laid back, I can picture him being ver…errr..very demaning in the bedroom”~Paige Weaver in reply to me flailing over Bentley*fist pumps wildly in the air*What wasn’t I as crazy about? Lukas. While his relationship with Sam was boring, they had been friends for a long time, but I didn’t even get a good strong feeling about that relationship, it just seemed weak. It wasn’t until Cole that Samantha really had someone in her corner besides her wickedly hot older brother, Bentley. Oh Bentley, it always comes back to you. *Stares off thinking about Bentley again*So would I rec this? YES! A fantastic read, that will open your eyes to the gritter side of life, but still give you hope. We also get a fantastic new set of characters from Paige to fall in love with. Thank you, Paige, for another amazing story!