Sunday, August 3, 2014

REVIEW: LOVELY TRIGGER BY R.K. LILLEY

THE IMPACT

Tristan hit rock bottom, and no one felt the impact harder than Danika. She was forced to see, in the most brutal of ways, that love does not conquer all. Bruised, bloody, and broken she had to walk away.

THE AFTERMATH

Picking up the pieces of your life after a tragedy is a daunting prospect, and that’s considering you still own all of the pieces. But what if you don’t? What if someone else owns those pieces, and those pieces are a part of your soul?

You dig deep and work with what you’ve got.
That’s what Danika told herself and believed, every single day, for years.

Tristan and Danika’s love had failed every test that life had thrown at them. She couldn’t forget that, not for one second. And if those tests had been overly harsh, well, she wasn’t one to wallow in self-pity. The failure was the thing she had to focus on. The failure was the lesson. She had no intention of working so hard to make it out of hell without learning that lesson well.

THE REUNION

Over six years after the night that changed everything, Danika finds herself forced to spend the weekend constantly in Tristan’s company, as they attend the wedding of two of their dearest friends. It’s been long enough that she feels they can be friendly again without it destroying her peace of mind, but just a small amount of time in his presence has her remembering something she had forced herself to forget: There’d been a reason she’d gone through hell with this man, for this man, some true good to precede the bad.

She shocks herself by quickly giving in to a hunger that she never imagined could still consume her.

Even the best intentioned denial has a breaking point.

THE HARSH REALITY
After everything that’s happened, the rise and the fall, the pain and the aftermath, can these two navigate the waters of acute regret, survive the trials of coming face to face with all that they have lost, and find the strength to try again?

ebook, 353 pages
Published March 10th 2014 by R.K. Lilley
Source: Purchased/Loaned by a friend
Purchase this book: Goodreads | Amazon

OUR REVIEW:

This was the final installment of the Tristan & Danika series and the way that book two ended absolutely guaranteed that we'd be reading this book. I just had to know what in the heck was going to happen with these two. HAD.TO. KNOW. Good news: all of the things you want to know will be explained by the time you get to the end. Bad news? It takes a while to get there..and R.K. Lilley makes sure that we work really hard to get there. We move through years, years with Tristan and Danika. We watch them struggle apart from each other. Struggle to move on. Struggle to share the same air space or room and not be destructive. Struggle, basically, to live without each other when all they ever wanted, was each other. 

Would you believe that I still think about them sometimes, and how much Rock Bottom effected me. It was like a horrible train wreck that wouldn't quit, and you could see the foreshadowing (great foreshadowing by the way) that would indicate how bad it was going to burn by the end. And burn it did. So when I started this book, I was having flashbacks, and even though it has been a while since I read the other two books...this one made my heart hurt from the first page. 

There were times when reading each of their narratives that I felt so much sympathy for their individual plights. Danika was so angry (rightfully) and bitter and resentful. She punished Tritan, repeatedly and in many ways, for what happened, but by doing this she tortured herself too. She was miserable even when she thought she wasn't. Her life seemed empty and false. The way forward for her had to be to learn how to forgive Tristan...but she had an impossibly difficult time trying to figure out how to do that. Tristan suffered with the knowledge of what he had or hadn't done and then suffered through each punishment she sent his way. The potential we saw in him in the first two books finally comes to fruition in this book. He's so much more--calm, peaceful, accepting, mature, patient, kind...gah..just..he's a good, good guy. He was not perfect, but he sure as hell was a much improved human being and continued to grow and learn throughout this book.

Tristan. I LOVEEEEEE Tristan Vega with all my heart. I think his redemption story made us believe in his so hard, and that he would and could be a strong man that could handle his addictions. It was a hard road to find out if he could do that, and I worried until the very freaking end that he was going to spiral again. I mean, we'd seen it before, so why not. You seriously must read (or die) this series. If you love books like we do for the pleasure, the emotion, the heartbreak, the soul crushing love and fight for things that are lost...this is the series to do it in. I will remember it, always. May re-read it when my masochism is at an all time high. 

This was a solid ending to their story. As I said before, there were chunks of the book that I had to restrain myself ..work really hard..to not strangle one or both of the characters. I'm glad that, though, that R.K. Lilley put them through everything she did and let us experience their journey because by the end, I definitely felt the reward. I did too. I was worried, as you are want to do, about how a third book in a series that we loved so much would fare. By my account, I loved it. Tristan and Danika have so many faults, and they shine through. The brutal honesty and journey we went on them made this conclusion so worthwhile.

Shelley: 4 stars
Courtney: 5 Stars

About the Author
R.K. Lilley has been a writer since she can remember, but has held down some interesting jobs to pay the bills. For several years she was a first class flight attendant, and she always swore that she just had to write a book about it. Mixing her love of romance and all things BDSM, the Up In the Air Trilogy is her debut into the world of contempary romance and erotica. She is currently working on the final installment in the series.

You can contact R.K. at Authorrklilley@gmail.com
Visit her Facebook page to keep up-to-date on what she's working on

https://www.facebook.com/authorrklilley

And check out her website http://www.rklilley.com/

R.K. also writes urban fantasy under the pseudonym: Rebecca K. Lilley

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