Hold On You
by M.S. Brannon
Summary: “My heart lurches, and the agony throbbing in my side is soon masked by the feeling of uncertainty this moment has brought.” ~ Madison Stone
Life has a way of always keeping you tethered to someone or something in your past. It grabs you, threatening to never let go, and when you eventually attempt to release it completely, you are forced to face it, instead. For Madison and Nate, that is certainly true.
Finishing their senior year, life couldn’t have been better for them. They were young, reckless, spontaneous, and most importantly, they were best friends. However, for Madison, when the future’s path was presented to her, she only understood one notion—escape.
Ten years later, Madison believed she had all she ever wanted. She was convinced she had done everything right by pursuing a life on her own. Then it all began to rapidly fall apart. Nothing was certain anymore. In her mind, everything was lost, leading her back to the very place she had abandoned a decade ago.
For Nate, since the night Madison ran off, life had been the opposite slowly and painfully continuing to unravel around him. Over those ten years, he lost everything he held dear. As he had done time and time before, Nate found himself at the very spot where his pain had all begun, teetering on the edge of moving on or fading away.
Now, as they see all they tried to escape lying before them, Nate and Madison are forced to face the past and finally understand what it is about the other that keeps this unrelenting Hold on You.
Source: I purchased a Kindle copy
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Review:
Hold On You was a short, but sweet and kind of raw second chance romance. Nate and Madison didn’t do so well the first time around, but 10 years later, Madison ended up back in her hometown and back into Nate’s life.
Like all of M.S. Brannon’s books, it was darker than you’d initially expect a second chance contemporary romance to be. Nothing about her books are wholesome because there is always an underlying issue, emotion, or darkness threatening to break apart the lives of her characters. Nate had a major issue with fighting, drinking, and wanting to drink himself into oblivion.
I enjoyed the book and I liked the way things turned out for Madison and Nate. My only issue was that everything happened so fast and seemed a little over the top. I wish I would have gotten a lot more backstory of who they were before and who they were now before just jumping headfirst into crazy town with both of them. I wish that Madison was more.. introspective so I could have gotten the chance to learn about her motivations and feelings before she finally admitted them to Nate. I wish there was more of a lead up to Nate’s fighting. Basically, I just wanted a longer and deeper story than what I got. It just kind of felt like the tip of the iceberg.
However, I did enjoy it and I do recommend it for fans of contemporary romance with a bit of rawness and reality to it.
Labels: contemporary, Review, romance
