Paradise Fought: Abel

by LB Dunbar

• Hot Cover- Check
• Intriguing Blurb: Check
• Happy Reader: as you are about to discover that is an absolute –Check

Paradise Fought: Abel by L.B. Dunbar ticked all of my boxes and that was before I had opened the front cover and I must admit that actually dragging my eyes away from the cover was verging on a hardship, really I could have looked at that cover model a lot long that my husband would have considered appropriate!!!

But once I delved into the story I was blown away by the most beautiful story and the most fantastic man…Abel was so much more that I had anticipated and I love a good fighter but what I got was a fighter that had spent most of his life fighting life itself, fighting to just be who he is.

Abel was used to being on the back foot, used to being the kid that was disregarded and in some cases that might not be a bad thing but when his father dished out not just praise and attention but his vitriol it was Cain, his older brother that got it all.

The lack of care, for want of a better word leaves its mark on Abel and he struggles with not just self-esteem but the social interactions that a guy his age would normally take for granted.

So this bashful man is happy in the wings so to speak, sheltering in the periphery, secretly training to be MMA fighter just like he older brother. But when he meets Elma, there is more than meets the eye between the two of them.

Abel is certainly drawn towards her and he seems to have the knack of being in the right place at the right time when it comes to helping her out of tricky situations but can she help him too?

Elma has secrets, she also has a reputation, warranted or not she uses it to get exactly what she wants. But what she wants isn’t the run of the mill, she is ready to put her body on the line in a whole different manner, she wants to fight!

So Abel between the two of them they are almost the balance that they need, she needs him to help her reach her potential goal and he needs her to help him overcome the shortcoming that his inept upbringing didn’t equip him to deal with, especially women!

While Elma may have considered Abel is a distraction at times, she can send him my way in a heartbeat, I’d quite happily let him distract me for a while!

I adored the way his story grew. The fact that he was willing to step out of the shadows and fight to be the man that his soul told him he was, that the story gave him room to flutter his wings and eventually take flight. It wasn’t easy, to shake of the pain of his past, to forget that it was him that got to decide who he was, not his father, not his brother, no-pone but him. I understood that dispelling those doubts was not an easy task but I think by allowing him to express those doubts, the author gave his character a sense of proportion and a huge doze of realism. She didn’t allow him to breeze his way through the book, she made him work for the future that he needed.

Elma also had to learn to let go of the past and to work through the events that had marked her psyche. With Abel, she was willing to take the steps, because with him she could see that life had more to offer.

I loved the way they worked together, the effort they put in and the emotion that the author managed to infiltrate throughout the whole story, she held them true to themselves, and she handled them and their situation with delicate diplomacy and an edgy emotional attitude.

With Cain up in the next, I am counting the days.