Review: Evan's remarkable story concludes!
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 12 18, 2013
Evan Arden...you stole my heart back in the desert.You scared me back in Chicago.You made me angrier than I've ever felt with a fictional boyfriend.You broke my heart when you fell apart.And now, and now, and now.......You did all of that and more in this book._________________________________________After his meltdown and subsequent arrest, Evan is heavily medicated and placed in jail. His last visions of Lea and his pleading for her to take his dog Odin have stuck with me over the months while I waited for this book to come out. Evan has come across as a cold blooded crazy, that's for sure. But what he actually is is harder to define."Lieutenant Evan Arden, Marine sniping expert, brought home with minor injuries and muscle atrophy, but otherwise unharmed"He's a soldier who fought for our country.He was held captive and tortured for over eighteen months.He was brought back to the states and due to his lack of obvious physical wounds, he was pronounced OTHERWISE UNHARMED and sent back into the world, as if nothing had ever happened to him.Naturally, being tortured for any amount of time would leave a significant impact on a person's psyche. It's no wonder Evan has a hard time coping. He's shut his emotions of just to survive. All of these terrible things he's done, the people he's killed...I hate to say it's forgiveable, because it's not. But it is what it is, and his boss, the leader of the Chicago mafia, is the only constant in Evan's life. He'll do anything for him.But now, Evan has another reason to live."She'd just been a girl, lost in the desert.She should have meant nothing to me."It was that one chance encounter with Lea in the desert that snagged him and set his life's course in a tailspin. He isn't the same man that he once was. And now that she's come back into his life, he knows what he has to do."You have endured so much - far more than any one person should ever have to face - but you kept going"" I didn't endure it," I replied. "I cracked. I totally lost it.""Everyone has their breaking point, Evan. That's not bad; that's just being human(...)" I wanted to remind her of what I had become since then - a cold blooded, merciless killer - but I didn't.I kissed her instead. Again and again I kissed her because I didn't have any words for what I was feeling."I'm so happy that I decided to read this series. This kind of broken hero, I love...Evan is NOT all good, and this romance is NOT all happy and hunky dory, everything ends up in marriage and 2.5 kids (haha). BUT...it's a beautifully written and evocative story about a guy who came from nothing, sacrificed EVERYTHING, and finally found something worth living for.