Synopsis:
You met them in Forget Me Not. Now, hear Jack’s story.
Plagued by a dark past, Jack sees college as a way out. Desperate to escape the area where he grew up, the people who know his secrets, and his own family, he deals with his problems through alcohol and sex.
When he first sees Lily, she’s the epitome of everything he hates. Yet something about her makes Jack rethinks everything he knows and assumes about other people. Now, with the help of his best friend and lover, Jack has to decide if he wants to pursue something that he knows will only end badly.
Can Lily be one of the few people who can see Jack for who he really is – or will his darkness be too much for her to handle?
Excerpt:
The girl sitting on the couch looks like everyone else at this fucking school. Blonde, clean cut, dressed in clothes that probably cost more than my grandmother’s house.
“Lost?” I ask.
It’s her eyes that get me. I don’t even know what color they are. They seem to swim across the entire palate of blues and greens, no color enough to own the eye completely. There is something else in those eyes. A strange innocence mixed with a subtle sensuality that I bet she doesn’t even know she possesses. I can’t look away from her.
“I’m waiting for my boyfriend.” She gestures to the hall. I guess she’s saying this boyfriend is in the bathroom or something. It figures she has a boyfriend. Something about her, though, is causing things to happen that I don’t understand. The voice in my head knows how poorly this could go and I try to act cool, to distance myself from her.
“Innocent thing like you? I wouldn’t let you out of my sight.”
That was not cool and certainly not distant. I’m standing here flirting with this girl who probably thinks I’m a creep. I see in her face a wary curiosity, but girls like her think of guys like me as nothing more than a challenge. Anything that could happen after this moment would just turn out bad, likely with a lot of anger and her calling upon the aforementioned boyfriend to kick my ass. I don’t even have to see him. I know his type.
She meets my gaze and her mouth turns up in a wry smile. “I’m not that innocent.”
The challenge is there and I would love to test it. This girl looks like she’s just one wild night away from becoming an entirely new woman. I wouldn’t mind being the guy to help her out, to give her that one wild night. I’m tempted to touch her, to play with her damp hair, to see how she’d react if I kissed her right here. Her challenge would surely result in me being slapped, though.
“Sweetheart, I am sure we have very different understandings of the term.”
“That wouldn’t surprise me, but I don’t know that I mind being your idea of innocent.”
Review:
This story is Forget me Not from Jack’s perspective. Having read Forget Me Not first (keep reading for my review), it gave me an insight into the characters, and I knew the path the story would take. What I didn’t expect was the emotional element of this story.
Jack was an arse in Forget Me Not, but in Lily of the Valley, he is the character with the most depth and your heart breaks for this broken young man. The focus of this story is about the feelings Lily evokes in Jack and the challenges he faces in coping with those, particularly in light of his past experiences.
The dynamics of the relationships in this book are much more intriguing this time round. There is more of a focus on this element which works much better for me.
While I found that there was more depth of character and while the sex was still present, it didn’t appear to be the ultimate focus of this version, unfortunately as the exploration of significant issues unfolded, the story abruptly shifted, or the detailed fell a little flat. This disappointed me, as this account had the makings of really connecting emotionally with the reader, and it just missed it that little bit for me
At the end of the day, Jack and Lily’s story is likeable, if you read them, you shouldn’t be disappointed.
But for me, while Jack’s story could have been hot, deep, intense and sexy as… it just lacked something!
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| This gets 3 1/2 for me! |
Forget Me Not
Synopsis:
Lily had a crush on her brother's best friend, Derek for years - which led to their steamy night ten months ago in her bedroom. Now, Lily is going off to college and she and Derek are still going strong. However, when school starts, she realizes it's hard to maintain a relationship while also trying to live her own life. She and Derek find themselves falling apart and Lily has no idea where to turn.
Enter Jack. Everything about him is wrong for Lily and she knows it, but she can't stop herself from being attracted to him. When things implode with Derek, it's Jack who is there to pick up the pieces - and show Lily an entirely new set of experiences she didn't know she was missing.
Of course, Jack has his own problems and once Lily gets to know him better, she starts to wonder if she can handle all of Jack. When Derek reappears on the scene, Lily is forced to decide between two guys and herself. Can she find herself without losing the people who matter in the process?
Note: This is a work intended for readers 18+ as it features explicit sex between people in college. See where it began in the short story, "Her Brother's Best Friend.
Review:
This was my first experience with Sarah Daltry’s work. I did not read “Her Brother’s Best Friend” prior to this, and I would probably read more of her work.
I have to say that I struggled to read this initially. At the start, it very much appeared to me that any plot or story was quite superficial and that the book was essentially an excuse to throw explicit sex at you for the sake of … well I’m not sure (I say this, because it didn’t grab me as a hot erotic read, just to get the readers rocks off). I didn’t find the book appealing in this sense, I didn’t buy the relationship with Lily and Derek, and their literal inability to not fuck whenever they were together.
Also maybe I am naïve, I am not from America, and therefore have never attended a college such as has been described… or maybe I am just ‘really old’ but even during my University days, I didn’t relate to this “college” experience. When I say this, I am talking about the dorms, the roommates, the sex and the sex and the sex… LOL, I could however, relate to the challenge of living away from home, having to make new friends, trying to adjust and experimenting with different ‘things’.
Anyhoo – so Lily attends a different college to her perfect in every way boyfriend Derek, and after what seems like five minutes, the distance seems to drive them apart – enter Jack resident broken bad boy, who takes an interest in Lily, even if it is as an arse.
The story follows Lily’s attempt at self-discovery, which includes reflecting on her relationships and their worth in her eyes. A number of events take place that see Lily hurt a number of people, and ultimately have to make some decisions about the type of person she wants to be and be with.
What I will say though, is that I am glad I persisted with this story. The story went from being in my opinion, superficial erotic fluff to being a real journey of growing up, compassion, valuing what is truly important of course the need to know yourself before you can truly commit to someone else. It seemed that Lily and her relationships matured as the book progressed, I am unsure if this was the intention of the author at the beginning or more reflective of the authors own growth as she wrote this. If it was intentional, it is a risky move, as it requires a reader to persist to get to the substance, rather than grabbing them early and taking them on that emotional ride from the start. I could not be confident that the success rate of this plan would be high!
So besides all that, the sex is pretty graphic, it’s loud, its often, its explicit, it contained M/F and M/F/F encounters, and it pretty much was the answer to all of Lily’s problems… and for someone just out of High School – she was ‘very’ good at it! As a parent, that concept scares the shit out of me!!! LOL. Derek was perfect (so it appears), Jack was perfect (in his very flawed way) and Lily was easy!
While this review may sound a little sarcastic and like I really hated the book – that could not be further from the truth, I think the story as it was told, had the makings to be a great story, I think it took a long time for me to find the substance that let me relate in any way to the characters, and it took even longer for me to find that they actually had depth. But I am glad that I was able to finish the story, knowing I found these attributes.
Author Bio:
Sarah Daltry writes erotica and romance that ranges from sweet to steamy. She moves around a lot and has trouble committing to things. Lily of the Valley is her third full length novel, although she also has several story collections and two novellas available. Her other novels are Forget Me Not, the story that tells Lily’s version of events, and Bitter Fruits, which will be released by Escape Publishing in December. When Sarah isn’t writing, she tends to waste a lot of time checking Facebook for pictures of cats, shooting virtual zombies, and simply staring out the window.
Links:
Lily of the Valley
Goodreads ~ Amazon
Kobo ~ Barnes & Noble
iTunes ~ Reader Store (Sony)
Forget Me Not
Her Brothers Best Friend
Sarah Daltry
Goodreads ~ Website
Facebook ~ Facebook (Flowering Series)
Twitter ~ Pinterest ~ Tumblr
Giveaway:
Grand prize: Gift from Jack's "toy box"
1st prize: Set of signed paperbacks
2nd prize: 4 swag packs
3rd prize: 4 sets of signed bookmarks
1st prize: Set of signed paperbacks
2nd prize: 4 swag packs
3rd prize: 4 sets of signed bookmarks
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