When I signed up to be a part of the No Reverse blog tour, organized by AToMR Tours, I had never heard of Marion Croslydon. I can safely say she's on my radar now. Read on for for my review, then don't forget to enter a giveaway for one of three prize packs. Be sure to check out all the other tour stops too!
Published August 12, 2013
Publisher: Carlux Publishing
Format: e-galley, provided by the author and AToMR Tours
Genre: new adult contemporary romance
To Buy: Amazon
Rating: 4 STARS
(From Goodreads) A girl who needs to undo the past.
A boy who wants to forget it.
In love, there’s no way back.
At high school in Steep Hill, Kansas, Cassie O’Malley and Josh MacBride were the poster couple for quarterback/cheerleader romance until they starred in their own tale of teen pregnancy. No need to say: their shotgun wedding was low-key. But when there was no baby anymore, they went their separate ways.
Five years later, Josh has breezed through Georgetown and is about to finish his post-grad degree at Oxford University. He is set to join a lobbying group on Capitol Hill, owned by his new fiancée’s father. For Josh, the sky is now the limit… only he must first take care of a tiny legal matter: technically, he’s still married to the girl who broke his heart.
Meanwhile, Cassie has been waiting tables in Steep Hill to pay for her sick grandmother’s care. On the day of the old lady’s funeral, Cassie is served with two sets of papers. Josh is asking for a divorce. Her heart squeezes, but, well, he moved on a long time ago. But the second envelope shakes Cassie to the core. So, for the first time, she leaves Kansas and heads to good ol’ England.
There, Cassie finds that Josh has not just “moved on,” he’s freakin’ engaged to some blue-blooded heiress. The feelings Cassie had buried deep rush back to her. But no matter if he keeps thrusting the divorce papers under her nose, she needs him to save the only person she loves more than Josh, more than life itself…
Never have I wanted a bookish couple to be real more than Josh and Cassie. Because then I could lock them in a room and shake some sense into them. Or, at the very least, smack them around a little. I haven't raged this much about a book in quite awhile. The feels were intense. In fact, as soon as I finished, I jumped on Twitter and sent this message:
The feels. THE FEELS! Just finished No Reverse by @MCroslydon and my heart is on. the. floor. Great book, but waiting til 2/14 may kill me.
— Krista's Dust Jacket (@KsDustJacket) August 11, 2013
You know how I really love strong female characters? Well, in this case, I think Cassie is just a little too strong. She makes decisions for the people she loves without consulting them first, out of a blind sense of trying to make a better life for them. Knowing full well that those decisions will veritably ruin her own life. Her martyr complex is off the charts. There were many aspects of Cassie that made me really angry. But, mostly, my heart absolutely broke for her.
And Josh has tried to put up an impenetrable wall around his heart where Cassie is concerned. And, the old adage of "out of sight, out of mind" really is true - as long as she was an ocean away, Josh convinced himself that he was doing okay. But, when Cassie shows up, his best laid plans fall apart in mere days.
Cassie and Josh do this dance through much of the book. It's painfully obvious that they are still hopelessly in love with each other. They want to be around each other, touch each other, talk to each other. But, there are also these massive hurts that have been caused by both of them, so their interactions end up being very anguished and sorrow-filled. It was so sad and unbelievably frustrating.
Marion Croslydon knows how to write the feels. I liked how she used the dual POVs and the periodic flashbacks to build the story and the landscape surrounding these two. The pacing was really nice. We got glimpses of what happened five years earlier a little at a time, such that I guessed the general gist of what happened, but not the specifics, which were revealed toward the end.
Although there isn't a cliffhanger, per se, the reader is definitely left hanging to find out what happens next with Josh and Cassie. Croslydon has promised us their follow-up story early in 2014. Unless we can strong arm her into giving to us earlier. :)
About the Author
They wanted her to have a serious job, providing financial stability and social standing. For years, she really tried to make them happy; she studied hard, got into top schools, graduated with honors and found a high-achieving job.
But deep down, Marion was miserable. She never wanted to be a top executive, brokering deals in New York, London or Tokyo. Marion wanted to be… a ROMANCE WRITER. She wanted to spend her days in that good ol’ tracksuit of hers, in front of her laptop, popping down Oreos like there was no tomorrow. She wanted to fall in love with a different man each time she wrote the first line of a new book (while being happily married to the most handsome man in Great Britain).
That’s exactly what Marion does these days, and it makes her incredibly happy. She loves to share these happy vibes, talk book crush, fictional boyfriends and sexual chemistry with like-minded people. And because she spends most of her days on her own deep inside her writing cave, you are welcome to come and say “hello” from time to time. Just to make sure she doesn’t sink into insanity.
Her friends, family and arch-enemies (there are quite a few) will be forever grateful for your help.
Find out more about Marion Croslydon here --> Website * Twitter * Facebook
Giveaway
Prize Pack #1: Signed copy of No Reverse, £10 Amazon gift card (British Pounds), 1 No Reverse notebook, 1 No Reverse mug, 1 No Reverse mouse pad, 1 No Reverse pen
Prize Pack # 2: Signed copy of No Reverse, £10 Amazon gift card (British Pounds), 1 No Reverse notebook, 1 No Reverse mug
Prize Pack # 3: Signed copy of No Reverse, 1 No Reverse notebook, 1 No Reverse pen
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1 comment:
Haha! Great review Krista! I am so glad we both had the same feelings about this one! I did want to shake Cassie so many times and tell her stop a minute and think about the consequences for her actions! I loved both her and Josh together and the whole time I felt this huge weight in my gut because I was afraid of where Marion was going to go! I can't wait for their next book! Fingers crossed we can get it next, LOL!
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