Spike

by Amity Cross

Ren and Ash, finally!!!

I thought that I was at last going to get my favourite guys exactly where they needed to be, after all they were taking huge strides but were they in the right direction?

I whipped through this one desperate to see where this warring couple would take not only me but them.

Together they have spent much of their time on what I can only say looks to have been a collision course rather than a path to happiness but sometimes the strength to survive needs to be challenged and Ren and Ash were certainly a challenge, to each other!

They are both complicated characters, they have a slew of issues that would have sunk even the strongest of individuals and they have done their best to try to work through them. But despite the support that they can give each other, the past still hangs heavy around their necks, especially Ash.

When he cuts Ren out, in a foolish attempt to tackle his issues again on his own, he is opening a can of worms that the two of them may find impossible to put a lid on. Because just when they were beginning to face the world as a couple (ish), the love and time that she had so willingly invested in their relationship began to feel as if it was being thrown away. Ren cannot accept secrets and Ash is treading on very thin ice, no matter how honourable his reasoning.

This pair are hard work, they are so complicated but they make things worse at times by living so far in their own heads that I really didn’t believe that they were ever going to be able to bring the real them to the surface. Until Ash could open his heart and mind to Ren, I was beginning to believe that they were only heaping more heartache on an already volatile situation.

I liked the fact that the author gave such strong voices to both Ash and Ren that she allowed them to time to almost wallow in their misery before allocating them enough obstacles with which they would have no option but to carve a path out in order to survive.

She made them work not only for each other but for themselves, to understand that they were enough individually, but together they could be phenomenal.

From the very beginning their relationship has been completely captivating, because it was one that I didn’t know whether they had the fortitude to survive. They had the need and the desire but sometimes that just isn’t enough.

They completed each other, they seem to be on this earth for nothing other than to save each other but they both live their lives on what is effectively a short leash and with an explosive temperament.

But Amity Cross gives them a story that they not only need but deserve and one which as a reader I was happy to read.

She lets them revel in the passion that they share all the while piecing them together bit by bit. She and they fight for a future that they can both work with and that I as a reader could believe.

I liked Rena and Ash, firstly because they were honest, they didn’t sugar coat issues their issues, they showed how hard it is to live life the way they do, with a cloud of darkness, refusing to allow illumination, no matter how hard you try to shift it, but in just a few short pages, the author permitted and encouraged them to slowly peel back the curtains of darkness and not only let the light into their lives but to let each other in too.

This is a battle of wills and a fight for not only survival but for a future.

A story not to be missed.