Author: Robin York
Genre: New Adult
Rating: 5 Stars!
Synopsis
Caroline still dreams about West. His warm skin, his taut muscles, his hand sliding down her stomach. Then she wakes up and she’s back to reality: West is gone. And before he left, he broke her heart.
Then, out of the blue, West calls in crisis. A tragedy has hit his family—a family that’s already a fractured mess. Caroline knows what she has to do. Without discussion, without stopping to think, she’s on a plane, flying to his side to support him in any way he needs.
They’re together again, but things are totally different. West looks edgy, angry at the world. Caroline doesn’t fit in. She should be back in Iowa, finalizing her civil suit against the ex-boyfriend who posted their explicit pictures on a revenge porn website. But here she is. Deeply into West, wrapped up in him, in love with him. Still.
They fought the odds once. Losing each other was hard. But finding their way back to each other couldn’t be harder.
My Review
It's one of those 'difficult to read and even more difficult to rate' books. My usual M.O. for books that have this type plot device would be to DNF it so fast or get ragey about it. My friends know this about me and I have stepped on my soapbox on more than one occasion. But once in a while it works and it adds another layer to the story. It doesn't make for an easy read but once the rage is over, you get that nice little HEA at the end, it makes everything worth it.
"All the songs are love songs, and this one is ours."
Harder picks up 3 months after Deeper ended. West is in Silt and Caroline is in Putnam. For all intents and purposes, they were over. Caroline and West was no more. I think this is an important thing to remember, at least for me, in light of happens at 20% in the book.
When West's biological father died, Caroline decided to be there for West even though West doesn't want her anywhere near Silt. When they saw each other, everything was different. West wasn't the same guy Caro fell in love with. He was basically a stranger: bitter, angry and desperate.
Caroline did the best she could to be there for him but West was having none of it. And in what could be the cruelest and most boneheaded move ever, West set out to destroy Caroline's hope for him the only way he knows how: (view spoiler)
