unDefeated by JC Valentine

Ok, so shot me… but I can’t help myself I just love a fighter series and this is the third book in the Wayward Fighter Series by the super talented JC Valentine and picking right up where Tapout left off we are thrown into Spencer and Olivia’s story.

Now I have to say that I haven’t been a Spencer fan up until now but he comes out fighting and I have to say he has won me round.

We know that Spencer is an addict, he has a gambling addition that has ruled him for too long and like many addicts he has now eventually reached the bottom of his particular barrel. But it has been a long, slow and particularly unceremonious slide to the hell that he is now wallowing it and he has no-one to blame but himself.

He has lost his friend Jamison and in the process cost Jamison everything he wanted but Spencer is not immune to that pain, he knows what he has done and there is no-one that can make him feel any worse than he already does but he knows that he has to sort himself out, no-one can do it for him and in his first step towards me actually seeing the new man, he books himself into a rehabilitation centre and decides to sort his shit out!

So good start in my book, I was rooting for him all the way, but that is not to say that he didn’t irk me profusely throughout the book. He loved to wallow and despite the fact that Olivia turned up at the facility to see him every week, he refused to see her – consoling himself with the fact that he was doing her a favour, protecting her from him and the trouble that seems to hang around him like a bad smell- honestly man get over it! He was hanging her out to dry and it was infuriating!!

No matter what he did, she still desperately tried to stand by him until her friend Allison had eventually had enough and intervened. She made it clear that she couldn’t help Spencer if he wouldn’t let her and now was time for her to move on.

Reluctantly and with a heavy heart – Olivia agreed to a blind date. Now I had no idea how this was going to play out but when Spencer rocks up at her door with nothing and nowhere to go following his stint in rehab, there was only ever going to be one outcome – he had gone to the one person he knew would be there for him – Olivia.

Well I get that he was presumptuous and that he had been rude and pig headed by ignoring her but he needed her and she just couldn’t let him fight what he was going through alone.  

I loved the support that she was willing to give to him and I have to say that I also loved the way she was frank and forthright with him but what melted my soul was when she was facing her own demons and it was then that the love Spencer had for her made sense to him and he knew that he had to supply her the same support as she had given him. He finally knew what it was like to love and be loved in return.

They were starting to make a dent in the baggage that they carried but they have a way to go but I have everything crossed for the pair of them and I hope to hear more of their particular story as the series continues.