Review: LIKE A DRUG IN BOOK FORM!!!
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 07 8, 2014
“She was soothing chaos. Like that first taste of anaesthesia, before you lost your senses. Or the venom that numbed you before it killed you. I really couldn’t decide which.”I have never read a book that left me even more clueless in the end than I was at the beginning of it. Until now. Filled to the brim with clues, hints, even small revelations, and yet I am still as blissfully perplexed as I was at the end of The Wild Side. From the moment we dive back into this story, starving to decipher the plotline and figure out the enigma that is Iris, we cling onto every word, every double meaning, every half-truth, only to realise that no matter how many theories we concoct in out heads, we will only remain privy to what the author allows us to know. Nothing is obvious, nothing is predictable, and every delicious moment of ignorance is outright addictive. I am so in love with this series, I could cry!“Which one was the real Iris?”Dair is heartbroken, lost, desperate to find the girl who turned his life upside down and changed him forever. But Iris has been missing for two months and every moment spent with her seems like a dreamlike memory. His body has craved her unquenchably every second she has been gone, but his heart has missed her even more. During the short time they spent together, she has changed him, revived his spirit and awoken the fire he never knew was in him. Before Iris, Dair’s life was a predictable collection of routines, but her passion, tenderness and generosity both with her affections as well as her body have lit up a spark in him that won’t go away, even without her now in his life.“Me, I was simple. I was order. A very neat, efficient machine that ran on nothing but air… And me plus Iris, that was a monster of a machine, with all gears going at different speeds, some spinning off their hinges, just going mad, but it was a wonderful madness, at full throttle, misfiring in all directions.”And then she suddenly reappears. And we are once more running at full tilt, Dair and Iris using every stolen moment to lose themselves in each other’s arms, but the weight of every unanswered question and every doubt taints those moments, making Dair more and more desperate for answers. We are finally offered subtle hints of Iris’s life, but they barely paint a picture for us to ponder on, giving us very little insight into her character. All we see is what Dair gets to see—a young woman who shows her love selflessly and freely, a woman who craves affection herself, who has found something beautiful and precious in Dair, and who is not afraid to take risks to have it, as short-lived as it may be. All she asks of Dair, all she has ever asked of him, is to accept her as she is with him, stripped bare from her past or present, and embrace the truth of her feelings for him.“We aren’t defined by our pasts. We are who we are. You don’t have to know where I grew up, what year I was born, to know the woman in front of you.”But as their bodies satisfy their thirst for each other, and as their hearts become more and more entwined, Iris’ secrets keep feeding Dair’s insecurities and his fear of losing her again, every fleeting second with her tearing him even more apart. We are left with another heart-stopping ending, one that alludes to a million different possibilities, and makes us none the wiser regarding what is to come. The mystery of this story is simply exhilarating, no other way to put it, the anticipation of what comes next being half the fun in my eyes. I am STARVING already for the final instalment and I love it!“In a world full of lies, you were my truth. You were my light and my compass.”