Review: Gripping
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 09 7, 2013
When your heart is empty you fill it however you can. When you decide to be selfish you shut off your empathy and do what you have to do to get by. The twisted sense of truth you accept becomes your reality. The problem is that when all is said and done the heart you break the most might just be your own."Really, lies are so easy to tell when you don't care anymore, or when you have lost all shame. That is my truth."Cathy met and fell in love with Ben and so began their happily ever after. That was until the couple experienced a loss that left Cathy broken and hopeless."I willingly jump into the dark abyss of hopelessness. Misery welcomes me with its dead arms, despair freezing my heart."With a shattered heart and irrevocably damaged soul, Cathy hits rock bottom.During and after the couple's trauma her husband's reassuring promises began to feel like biting lashes against her broken heart. His touch felt like a harsh reminder of her inadequacies. She needed to heal. She needed to smile and forget the pain that encircled her heart, body and soul. She needed an escape and eventually she found one.Cathy meets Arsen. She could tell he was trouble and even when he made his desire for her known she put him in his place. When he realized he could be himself with Cathy and once he realized she wasn't going to sleep with him the two became friends. The lines of this friendship were blurry at best. A series of events leads them down a road that neither expected to go. Eventually Arsen, Cathy and Ben are on paths that not one of them would have chosen for themselves.Cathy makes a conscious choice to leave her conscious behind. She sacrifices her morals to repair an emptiness inside of herself that demands her priority. She does what she has to do without the foresight to see if it will be worth it in the end.Will the choices Cathy makes ruin three lives or will she finally get a happy ending? Will her happy ending be at the expense of someone else? Will there be a place for both Ben and Arsen to find happiness as well? The ending has me questioning what happiness looks like and the other points of view from which the end can be perceived.This book contained some themes that normally are deal breakers for me. The difference here was that Mia Asher wrote about these themes in a way that made me look beyond the right and wrong and see the emotions, the heartbreaking reality that make the choices that Cathy faces different. They are different because they are hers, because she made her choices as a broken and hopeless woman.This story gripped me by the heart and refused to let go. I cried with Cathy, I cried with Ben and I cried with Arsen. This book was devastating and beautiful all at once. This is one of those stories that changes you a little bit. There will now forever be a little piece of Arsen with me always and I wouldn't have it any other way. ~Julie