4 stars

Meet Antoine.

Yes, you are looking at my very first Kindle. Sexy, isn't he?

Anyway, this was the first full-length book ever read on Antoine. I don't know what he thought about the experience. I liked it. Thank you, Gods of technology (and my family) for this gift.

"One Tiny Lie" induced lots of eye-rolling in the beginning. Livie is sexually repressed alright. First kiss at eighteen? I was starting to think this would be an awful journey of self-discovery between good-girl and bad-boy.

But K.A. Tucker surprised me. As Livie (or Irish) would say, she is a virgin whore. During her first college party, she gets beyond drunk, gets a tattoo, spends the entire time munching on the hottest guy in Princeton's handsome face and feasting on his sculpted, tattooed body... And wakes up in only her panties, while the Jell-O thief sleeps naked a few feet away.

Perfect Livie has lots of trouble coping with her newly-found savageness and the life-plan she's never before questioned. Ashton isn't much help, what with the flashes she keeps getting of their partially-forgotten partying streak. Also, he seems to be an assumed man-whore, whose girlfriend lives miles away, unsuspecting of his behaviour.

Of course, there are plenty more layers to Ashton that what people know of him. And Livie is the one unraveling them, piece by piece. Or chunk by chunk. Honestly, this book felt too short. Everything was rushed. Ashton and Livie could've had a little more time to develop their relationship properly.

That said, I have to mention my favourite character in this series: Dr. Stayner! He's still hanging around the Cleary family, shocking everyone and helping them deal with their issues, cost-free. He's amazing, really.

Overall, this was a good follow-up to "Ten Tiny Breaths". I've been snooping around and the next book's Cain's. That should be good.

4,5 stars

I'm losing my shit. Another soul-crushing book? Why do I hate myself?

I think I might have gone through one of the largest twists of my life. I was utterly shocked. I even had to pause my reading for a couple of minutes. You know, just to take it all in.

This is a heartbreaking tale of a girl fixed on her hate... Kacey hates the perpetrators of the drunk-driving accident that killed her parents, boyfriend and best friend. Every day, she faces the nightmares, the panic attacks, the inability to touch other people's hands, to engage in any kind of intimacy. Yet she manages to fight against the tide threatening to drown her completely, all for her younger sister, Livie.

And the handsome, mysterious neighbour she falls in love with. Trent barges into her life, awakening a need and a sweetness that she thought was long buried. Old Kacey is beginning to surface once more, and it is a beautiful journey to witness.

That would be a fitting adjective for this book. Beautiful.

Pain and misery. Love and longing. They are strung together to form a realistic picture of our everyday struggles, of the dire consequences of PTSD and how sometimes people can hide all of their hurt beneath an apparently impenetrable shell. Until the right person shows up and the fissures begin to appear. 

For Kacey, Trent was that person. He brought her back to life, after four years of numbness. Beautiful.