Je ne le voyais déjà presque pas. S'il devenait Premier ministre, je serais obligée de le regarder à la télé pour me rappeler à quoi il ressemblait.

- La télé dit la vérité, a affirmé Lola.
- La télé ment sans arrêt. Ils nous disent ce que nous voulons entendre.

- N'oublie pas une chose, Callum, quand tu flottes dans une bulle, la bulle finit toujours par éclater, et plus la bulle t'a emmené haut, plus la chute est douloureuse.

I was offered a chance to read For the Love of Grace by Andy Blackman and I am so happy I jumped on it. This suspense thriller quickly captured my attention and held it throughout.

Thanks Rachel at Authoright Marketing & Publicity and Andy Blackman for the chance to read and review this fantastic novel of love, loss and revenge.

Amazon  /  Goodreads

MY REVIEW

Thank goodness I had a sixth sense about For the Love of Grace by Andy Blackman, because neither the cover or the blurb made me anticipate what was to come. I was quickly captured, wondering how Tom will unravel his complicated life and find a happy ending.

Tom grew up poor and hungry, with a thirst for knowledge that was aided by a photographic memory. He is a gentle, loving boy, devoted to his mother, until…

His entire life changed in the blink of an eye. Circumstances beyond our control can cause our lives to take a turn we never could have anticipated and this is just what happened to Tom.

I feel so much sympathy for Grace, his mother, that deserves sainthood in my book. She is a selfless, loving person, giving to others just because of their need. How much pain is such a wonderful person supposed to endure? I feel *** is not doing right by her.

I am halfway in and my heart is breaking for Tom. He is a good guy caught up in bad situations through no fault of his own, just being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Life deals him some bad breaks, but this 30 minutes was the worst of his life and nothing would stop him from exacting his revenge. And I am with him! I want to pick up a gun and hunt them down like the brutal savages they are.

I love when a man is bad and good at the same time. Know what I mean? Where do you draw the line? I sympathize with Tom, I feel his pain through Andy Blackman’s words. Andy does a fantastic job of taking me sky high only to drop me, splatting my feelings all over the ground.

I knew from the beginning that something really bad, tragic, would have to happen to take him down the road of an assassin and I kept waiting for it to happen. The suspense never let me rest. The writing created a sense of impending doom.

The peripheral characters are not written just for support. They all play an important part in his life, whether they are his friends or on the receiving end of his wrath, but this is Tom’s story.

I don’t know why I didn’t see the ending coming. I should have seen it. I guess I was so wrapped up in Tom, that I really didn’t want it to end, because I just could not find a way for it to end the way I wanted.

My only complaint…the book is too short. I would have loved to be with Tom through his training to become such a proficient killer. I would have loved a few other parts of the story to be fleshed out more, giving me more details. Maybe this is just because I didn’t want the story to end. BUT…it doesn’t.

I definitely want to check out Book II, The Second Son!!!!

I voluntarily reviewed a free copy of For The Love of Grace from Andy Blackman.

  4 Stars

Read more HERE.

I was conflicted about whether to read this book at first. Is this Malorie Blackman's newest book? I mean, it was on display under new books in the library and it was even in hardback. Plus, it was sci-fi and I remember what her last sci-fi book was like.

So I was presently surprised when I started enjoying it a lot. The characters were great, I really enjoyed the setting (set aboard a spacecraft trying to survive to get some fugitives to safety) and for once, the plot was actually decent.

You know what wasn't? The romance. Insta-romance. 

Our two main characters, Vee and Nathan, literally fall in love with each other at first sight. Despite not knowing a thing about each other, immediately pulse rate going up at first contact, temperature going up, all that shit.

Oh boy, the love-making scenes in this book are ridiculous. There's SO MANY of them. Never mind that Vee decides to kiss Nathan full on the mouth in front of his friends just to prove a point to them. Oh, I'm sure it wasn't for any romantic reason whatsoever.

Before the book gets halfway they're both making out in the navigation room. Like getting all sweaty, covering each other with kisses, steamy stuff.

Or at least, as steamy as you can get for a YA book. It does become sex. No, seriously, they start screwing all the time. It isn't vivid or explicit but bloody hell. You know, I started skimming the love scenes because there were SO MANY. There were like several chapters devoted to this. I mean why can't these characters just be friends?

Sure, Vee has spent 3 years with no human contact at all. They're like, 18 or 19 years old maybe even though they start getting butterflies in their tummy just by looking at each other and...well, this is more like how 15 or 16-year olds act (no offence to anyone of that age group). Aside from all the constant sex.

Now, the shitty romance aside, I was a bit bored until maybe just after halfway. Because people start dying and there's a murderer aboard the ship and that starts getting exciting.

And then more love triangles (yes, it's Malorie Blackman, what did you expect?), more people dying, more drama, and it does get pretty good. I was actually pretty hooked onto it in the last part and it ended rather satisfactorily.

There were quite a few decent plot twists. I felt it was mediocre at first but after some unnecessarily frequent sex scenes, all of which I skipped in disgust, the plot picked up again and it kept me reading. So I'll give it 4.5 stars for that.