Review: Excellent, heart-breaking and perfect.
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 07 14, 2014
**Reviewed on behalf of Give Me Books**What? Those aren’t tears you see glistening in my eyes. Nope. Allergies. And those goose-bumps? They’re from the air conditioning being set too low. Yep. That’s right. Nothing to see here, folks. I didn’t just finish reading a book that made me well up like a baby with separation anxiety and smile like a giddy teenager on their first date. Orrrrrrrrrrrr, maybe I did. Alright, I did. Rex (the book and the character) made me cry – not ugly cry, for the record, it was more gentle than that – and smile and swoon and swear. And I loved every second of it.Rex Grayson thinks the stacked blonde that walks into his tattoo parlor is hot. Her desire to get ink that says Love Sucks isn’t the norm but then again, neither is what she makes him feel. Vanessa Hilliard has no faith in love. No hope for it in her life. All she wants is a tattoo. What she gets instead is a twisted, fucked-up bad boy that has the potential to change her life. They’ve both got pasts that are holding them back. And they’re both about to find out that the other is way more than they ever expected.I think I felt every moment of this book. Right from the beginning, but especially when Rex and Vanessa came face-to-face, I could tell that I was going to get attached, invested and emotional. Neither of them were perfect characters – they’re both holding on to shit that fills their past and clouds their future – but both of them were relatable in their own way. Their respective hurt made them real, human and flawed and I really enjoyed seeing them struggle to recognise and accept the changes that finding that someone can bring. I loved the structure of this book. The major moments weren’t all crowded at the end of the book, forcing and rushing the ending. Rex and Vanessa’s moments of realisation were well-spaced and well written – no sudden personality changes or insta-love.  But my very favourite moment, however, didn’t belong to Rex or Vanessa, but to a young woman getting a tattoo as a memorial to a lost loved one. Her sentiment, her words had tears streaming down my face. I re-read that passage several times, and highlighted it because it. was. perfect. So that explains the tears. But the smiles? There wasn’t one single moment that had me grinning – there were several throughout the book. Little passages that made me happy and hopeful. Sweet interactions that made me want to fall in love again. And an ending that made the romantic in me swoon. I haven’t read the first story in this series yet, but I will. I’ll just make sure to take some of that allergy medicine and bump the a/c temp first...Rex is the second book in the Finding Love series and can be read as a standalone. No cliffhanger.5 stars.