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Lindsay

Lindsay - from Co2BL

I love reading Romance, music, NKOTB, my dog, baseball and J.J. Hardy.

REVIEW: Monster Stepbrother by Harlow Grace

Monster Stepbrother - Harlow Grace

Confession time…the blurb of this book scared me. I’m talking, run in the other direction scared me. So….why did I read this you ask? Well…uh…because I’m crazy!?

 

Ok, reality is, I’ve been on a stepbrother kick lately. There have been quite a few coming out in the last few months and while some have been pretty decent, others have been…well…really bad. So I’ve been determined to find a GOOD one. But I don’t gravitate toward dark books. And this one sounded beyond dark. But my curiosity got the better of me and I signed up to review it. Again, cue the crazy scared. However, once I started this, I was unable to put it down. I literally read this straight through, in one sitting.

 

I can’t say that the relationship was pretty, because it wasn’t. It was dark and twisted and downright awful at time. I can’t even say that I loved the characters (particularly Oliver) but (and maybe this was wishful thinking) I felt like I was able to see past the awful things that were said to see that Oliver was in denial and fighting his feelings HARD. He had very good reason to early on since Maya was younger than him, and under 18.

 

Later, I felt like he continued to fight just because that’s what he’s always done. But there were a few instances where his walls fell and I could see his genuine feelings for Maya. I loved those moments. One was sweet and the other was a stressful situation where there was no pretending. It was a critical situation and there wasn’t any room for pretense. I was a little disappointed that that Oliver didn’t own up to his feelings at this point and reduced the situation to their typical fighting and insults.

 

Some moments were definitely over the top and had me rolling my eyes because Oliver and Maya were being idiots (mostly Oliver), but I just chalked it up to the dark style, something akin to Undeniable by Madeline Sheehan. It wasn’t pretty. I tried to look beneath the surface of Oliver’s insults and attitude to see his real feelings. Heck, maybe that was hopeful thinking on my part and there was nothing else there, but that’s what I saw and how it was for me. I saw the draw that the characters had, the fight to deny themselves what they wanted and the desperation both characters felt at a very desperate and emotional moment and later when they even admitted to themselves, how they really felt and things still went wrong, they weren’t honest with each other. They never actually communicated and expressed their feelings.

 

But even with all that, I still enjoyed the book. I enjoyed the writing and would definitely read more from the author.