Author: Emma Grayson
Genre: Contemporary
Hosted By: Francessca’s Romance Reviews
Take It All (Blinded By Love #1)
Synopsis
Judy Garland said it best, For it was not into my ear you whispered but into my heart. It was not my lips you kissed but my soul.
If you asked her why she loved him, she would tell you it was because he was who he was and, well, she was who she was.
Plain and simple.
All her life Lennox Ward felt incomplete. Her heart was always searching for that one special thing; that special someone she had yet to find.
Then Caleb Kingston came strolling back into her life unexpectedly, and little did she know her world was about to come crashing down around her, forever shattering it.
PURCHASE LINKS
Amazon UK
Amazon USA
KOBO
Barnes & noble
REVIEW
The fact that the situations and heartbreak explored in Emma Grayson’s Take It All are inspired by real events illustrates how devastating addiction is not only for the person with the compulsions but also for those who love that person and must watch him suffer through the ups and downs without being able to offer any assistance because he refuses to take it.
Lennox Ward finds herself in this exact situation when she quickly falls in love with Caleb Kingston, and despite the hell that Caleb puts her through and the many times she’s left wondering where he is or even if he’s still alive, her love for him never waivers. She stands by him even when everyone around her feels like she should let him go. But Lennox understands that life isn’t supposed to be perfect and that love shouldn’t come with ultimatums. She’s completely invested in her relationship with Caleb and even though for a lot of their time together, it is an uphill battle, she won’t give up on him or their love. She’s not a quitter, especially when the person she’s supposed to get away from is the man that owns her heart.
Take It All was a hard read for me. It was difficult to watch Lennox take hit after hit when it came to Caleb and his addiction, and even though Emma writes in a way that clearly shows how Lennox is feeling throughout all of the drama and why she makes the choices that she does, I still didn’t understand it. I didn’t want Lennox to get pulled down with Caleb, but I felt like that was exactly what was going to happen if she stayed on this path with him.
Caleb aggravated the hell out of me. His choices clearly show what happens when someone succumbs to addiction and its tight grip. Despite how much everyone tried to get him to see what he was giving up by allowing drugs to dominate his life, he couldn’t see past the high he received.
Overall, I did enjoy reading Take It All. I just had a hard time wrapping my brain around Lennox’s selflessness and persistence to stand by Caleb despite how often he lets her down. But being consumed and blinded by love may be exactly what keeps Lennox fighting for the man who doesn’t seem to want to fight for himself. It will be interesting to see if Lennox and Caleb can find a way back to each other, especially after the cliffhanger that readers are left with at the end of this book.
A complimentary copy was provided in exchange for an honest review.
3.5/4 poison apples
Promise It All (Blinded by Love #2)
Synopsis
Caleb Kingston’s addiction got the best of him and he left everything important behind; including the one person he loved more than anything.
Lennox is left to fight through her heartache and pain as well as the crushing confusion she feels in the aftermath of Caleb’s departure. She finds it difficult to move forward because he didn’t just leave her behind, he also left their son, AJ.
Realizing Caleb will never leave the life of addiction behind and return to her and AJ, Lennox makes the painful choice to finally put Caleb and their love behind her. But when Caleb returns in a shocking and unexpected way, he changes her game plan and makes her question what she truly wants.
PURCHASE LINKS
Amazon UK
Amazon USA
KOBO
Barnes & Noble
EXCERPT
PROLOGUE
Friday, May 16th 2014
Present day
Tick.
Tock.
The room was empty and silent, except for the sound of Heather, the receptionist, typing away on the computer. Lennox looked at the time on her phone; she still had another fifteen minutes before it was her turn.
Tick.
Tock.
The office was old and dusty with a musky smell. She thought the place could use a good cleaning and possibly a new air freshener, preferably the scent of fresh linen. The chair she sat in was well worn with the padding torn and barely there as the wooden base under her was becoming uncomfortable.
Just like it did every single time she sat on it twice a week for the last five months, but this time wasn’t anything like the times before.
Tick.
Tock.
Every time she came, she was prepared, she knew what she was going to say, she was ready to hold her emotions back, she was ready to put on a brave face and act as if everything was okay, that she was okay.
Not today.
Today she had no idea what to expect. For the first time she was going in completely blind and unprepared. She had no expectations, no words to express how she was feeling or what she was thinking, but worst of all she had no idea how she was going to control her emotions and put on a brave face and continue to act as if she was okay.
Lennox wasn’t okay, she was far from okay.
Tick.
Tock.
Sitting in the god-awful chair, staring at the off white wall in front of her, she only had one word floating around in her head.
Kryptonite.
Superman’s weakness.
Like him, everyone has a weakness. Everyone has something in their lives that no matter how hard they try to push it aside, they can’t. They end up falling into its momentum until they’re on the ground without the strength to get back up again and live.
Tick.
Tock.
Lennox had fallen into her Kryptonite more than once, but this time she had more than just herself to lose. She struggled with wondering if the direction she was heading was right, if it was worth it, and if it was what she truly wanted.
She had perspective. She’d thought about every outcome possible, and she had done so more than once—more than twice. She thought about it every single day for the past three months. She was unfocused with everything in her life, and consumed with the possible outcomes of her day.
She knew nothing would be solved at the end of her time, or in a day or week or even in a month. She knew it could take months until she finally had clarity, and the thought of that killed her. She wasn’t the most patient person, but when it came to this specific topic she knew one thing for sure.
It was going to take time. It would also take work, patience, faith, hope, and most of all trust.
Trust… the hardest thing for her to give to anyone.
Tick.
Tock.
The chair next to Lennox suddenly wasn’t empty anymore as Heather stood up from her desk. “He’ll see you now,” she said.
Lennox nodded and stood to her feet, pulling her purse over her shoulder. Today was the first time she wasn’t going in alone. As they walked toward the mocha-colored door, Lennox laughed to herself as she thought about how it all started with a phone call.
A phone call she’d been waiting three years for. A phone call that changed everything.
REVIEW
At the end of Take It All, I was torn with how I wanted Lennox and Caleb’s story to end. The love that Lennox has for Caleb is limitless, despite the heartbreak she’s had to endure due to his addiction, but it’s that exact pain that makes me want her to run as far as she can away from him and find someone who can love her back exactly the way she deserves.
Book 2 is told in real time with flashbacks in the beginning of the story to show readers how Lennox and Caleb got to the place that they did when Promise It All begins, six years later. The biggest questions that Lennox has continued to ask herself for the past two and half years, since he left her for good, is what happened to Caleb and why he doesn’t feel the need to reach out to her or his family to let them know that he’s okay. Since that fateful night when her life imploded, she has done everything that she can to move on and be strong for the people around her, but she isn’t truly living, and she hides the pain and devastation that she feels on a daily basis from everyone who loves her because she doesn’t want them to see what Caleb’s abandonment has truly done to her.
When Caleb does make contact with his family, and she learns where he’s been and what he’s done, Lennox still holds out hope that they can reconcile and go back to being a couple despite how much they both have changed and what Lennox has had to go through while Caleb was gone. This part of the story is drenched in angst because Caleb is elusive and never gives Lennox clear and direct answers, which frustrated me to no end because despite Caleb’s lack of answers, she still wants him and would willingly take him back, which to me is mindboggling. The amount of free passes she gives him doesn’t set well with me, but that might be because I don’t feel like readers are given enough answers to truly understand everything that’s happened.
There’s so much still left up in the air when the book finishes that I was left confused and exasperated. I wanted answers. I wanted to see that Caleb was truly repentant for everything that he did. But he never comes off that way to me. I actually wanted to reach into my iPad and slap him silly for how detached he was acting when Lennox was pouring her heart out to him. I didn’t feel like we were really given a conclusion, which left me quite a bit dissatisfied. I’m still glad that I read Promise It All because I wanted to see if Caleb would get his act together and be the man who Lennox needed him to be; I just wanted more of a satisfying conclusion. I needed to know how it all ended up after Lennox fought to be with the one person she couldn’t live without.
A complimentary copy was provided in exchange for an honest review.
3.5 poison apples
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Emma Grayson is a Canadian author who resides outside of Edmonton, Alberta, Canada with her family and seven year old son. She is Amazon’s Bestselling author of Unbeautifully Loved, the first book of the Breathe Again series, as well as it’s follow up, Unbearable Guilt. She is also the author of Take it All and Promise it All, a series inspired by real events of her life.
Emma is currently working on a new novel, Erase my Scars, the first of a new trilogy.
When Emma’s not writing she enjoys time with her son, coming up with new book plots, going to the movies, reading, enjoying time with family and friends, and watching rerun episodes of Criminal Minds and Sons of Anarchy. She loves to watch the food network, music of all kinds, coffee, all things purple, Oilers hockey, and doesn’t leave the house without her cell phone, Kobo, flip flops and a pack of gum.
STALK LINKS
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