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370 pages, Kindle Edition
First published September 8, 2013
“I’m no superhero.”
“Tell that to the girl you’re rescuing.”
"If only she'd known then what she knows now, she would have picked up the nearest weapon and beat John to death the minute she met him. Instead she dated him, moved in with him, and then became his prisoner."
"She gave up somewhere along the way out of a sense of survival."
"Why would you do that for me? I'm just a woman with a destroyed face and body and no where to go?" …
"No, you're not. You're a girl who fell in love with the wrong guy. Your face doesn't matter, it's your heart that's important. And if you can love a guy like that, then I know it has to be twice the size of a normal one. Beside… you do have somewhere to go. You're going to my place now... you had a few years of your life taken away from you. Now we're going to get them back… You're going to stumble, but that's what I'm here for. Lean on me. I'll keep you from falling."
"I need to go back."
"Bullshit… You are NOT going back there. I don't care what you say… I'm not letting you go back."
"You're not my keeper." …
"You are your own keeper, Nicole. I'm just your protector."
"Scars are your body's way of healing, making that damaged part stronger than it ever was before the pain."
Listen, you're going to stumble, but that's what I'm here for. Lean on me. I'll keep you from falling.
Love sees inside the person. It doesn't stop at the surface. That stuff is all just window dressing, anyway. It says nothing about what you're really getting.
I know who I am and I know who he is. He’s no match for me
You listen to me, you stubborn little thing… you can’t tell me what I think about you, okay? That’s for me to decide.
It only took five days for her to go from invisible woman living in a house around the corner to the center of his universe
"She stares out the window as the late afternoon sun tries to make it's way through the window. Those gauzy curtains would make it almost impossible for her to see what’s going on inside her house, if she were ever standing on the lawn or the sidewalk looking in. But that never happens. She never leaves the house. Not even at night. Well, once she did. But then never again. The aftermath was not worth the brief taste of freedom."
"There would be no happy ending to this little story. She's not foolish enough to even dream otherwise. Life will never be a fairtale for a girl like her."
"
No one knew a woman lived there or that she even existed. A monster, living in darkness..."
"She could see one of the neighbor’s pools
out the back window. It was such a bright azure, so inviting. She dreamed of going over and
drowning herself in it many times, but then she’d look down at Kitten’s spot in the yard and know that
she couldn't. Then she’d be leaving Kitten behind and that never seemed right."
"You're my heart, babe. My heart. Without you I don't know what I'd do."
For the last three years, Nicole has been violently abused by her boyfriend. She used to be a very beautiful girl, but after years of abuse her face has been so disfigured that she can’t leave the house. The mental and physical abuse has made it impossible for her to leave, and even if she could have found the courage to try again, her boyfriend locks her in their home when he’s not there so that there’s no way out.
Until a little boy hits his baseball through her window, and a Knight comes to her rescue. When Brian goes to the house to apologise for his son breaking the window, the man that answers the door just feels off for him. And because he is unable to let it go, trying to find out about the monster his son saw, he goes again the next day. What he finds is an unconscious women, badly beaten. And because Brian is a good guy, he makes it his mission to help Nicole escape her monster of a boyfriend.
All the abuse Nicole has suffered just broke my heart, and it was at times very difficult to understand how much she was broken, up and to such a point that she just could not leave her abusive boyfriend, he brainwashed her in such a way that she believed that she deserved his abuse, that the secrets she kept would land her in worse trouble. It was heartbreaking to witness a strong and sweet woman reduced to such a weak state.
I wish there really was guys like Brian in this world. Such selfless and sweet guys. But honestly he just came across as too good to be true.
The romance felt like it happened way too fast, especially after all the abuse that Nicole suffered.
This is a very difficult book to review. Although the book didn’t appeal to me, I applaud the author for writing about such a dark subject, the domestic violence that so many women are subjected to, their suffering at the hands of the person that is supposed to love and protect them.
Your face doesn't matter, it's your heart that's important
This book had a nice premise and the first couple of chapters were actually promising but the whole plot went down hill so fast, it left my head spinning.
I cannot stress this enough, authors need to stop romanticising serious issues in books.
When authors write about Rape, Kidnapping, Domestic Violence, Pedophilia et al and label perpetrators of these acts "Anti-Heroes" it stresses me out, when they paint it in a romantic way, it really really does my head in.
Real Life is messy and frankly if you're going to bring the ugly that is part of life into books, you owe it to your readers and yourself to tackle that issue with respect. If it's too much then just write normal romance books where the biggest complication is probably lack of communication.
How, i mean HOW can you write what i can only classify as total B.S on domestic violence? People die from this, people's lives are practically destroyed from this. and i think it's very appaling that this author decided to write a book about this very gritty issue but never really addresses domestic violence head on. So you expect me, the reader to believe that a woman who has been abused for 3 BLOODY years to the point that her face has been disfigured (this brings me to how unrealistic the book cover is but i'll talk about that later),who hasn't spoken to any human being apart from her abuser for those three years agrees to go and live with a MAN who from the descriptions has an almost similar build to her abuser??? You expect me to believe that the hospital let her go without any referrals to theraphy? you expect me to believe that all through the book she didn't completely lose her shit once?? Not once did she lose her shit living in a strange man's house? are fucking kidding me?
How is it even acceptable to tell someone that has gone through such gruesome abuse less than a week ago according to the timeline of the book to stop feeling sorry for herself? Brian goes to Nicole in this scene:
"Stop. Now you're just feeling sorry for yourself...you're not going to mop around here all day and night, feeling sorry for yourself. This house is a pity party free zone".
"I'm no superhero."
"Tell that to the girl you're rescuing."
"Scars are your body's way of healing, making that damaged part stronger than it ever was before the pain."
"You just keep on crying until all the sadness is gone, and I'll just keep wiping the tears away until you don't need me to anymore."