“Anger is like a thorn in the heart…the roar of my courage and the cold sweat of my fear.” ~Luca
Pyromania is an impulse control disorder [1] in which individuals repeatedly fail to resist impulses to deliberately start fires, [1] in order to relieve tension or for instant gratification.
Damon Luca, or Luca as they called him. I thought of him more as Damien, the fucking devil within these walls that now is my life. Dark, broody, and deadly to any woman. Mind-blowing, soul-shaking, raw sex appeal. He was a tall statured boy with broad shoulders and a pair of green eyes that set my soul on fire. His inky black hair framed his hard, chiseled features. He had the type of body that had no business being on a seventeen-year-old. I knew that once he fully developed, he’d be nothing short of drop-dead gorgeous. As I said…deadly on the eyes…and dangerous for your heart.
My name is Allison. I met Luca through an unfortunate event when we were younger. I’m now twenty-four, and this is my story. My fucked up life. It’s not a pretty one. Then again, the most interesting ones aren’t…are they? This isn’t your usual love story. Anything but. There are no blue skies, rainbows, or unicorns. Only him…my own personal arsonist. He had the ability to set my panties on fire, leave my body smoldering, and turn my heart into burning embers. He scared the hell out of me, made me feel. He opened my eyes to the world of twisted love. But love no less. This scary, beautiful man stole my heart from a young, tender age and refused to give it back. Here’s our story…
This story is deep, dark, and deals with real scars and growth because of them.
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Review
Deadly on the eyes…dangerous on the heart
That’s the perfect description of Damon Luca – the man who is a fire-starter in more ways than one. He may be a pyromaniac who gets off on causing damage by setting fire to whatever will go up in flames, but where he does the worst damage is when he sets Allison’s body and heart on fire and then leaves her to smolder the pain and blaze on her own, never fully recovering or mending from the exposure.
Allison and Luca’s story is told in two parts – their first encounters and then their reconnection seven years later – a reconciliation that Luca had been planning since he left her all those years ago.
From the onset, readers can tell that Allison and Luca are truly combustible together…their connection is instantaneous, and they set each other’s bodies on fire from their first interaction. There’s a darkness in both of them that also can’t be denied, but together, they help channel one another’s rage and depression. Despite how much their love burns bright, though, outside forced squelch it and seven years later, they threaten to do it again despite Luca’s obsessive planning.
Luca is not a typical hero; his impulses and rage as well as his criminal father force his hands on numerous occasions. He reacts without thinking and is a bit of a stalker when it comes to Allison, but he also takes the steps that need to happen in order to protect the woman who remade him. There’s much more to Luca than Whitney allows readers to see, and it’s clear that despite his best efforts, he’s bound by familial duty, especially when extenuating circumstances occur. Luca’s a fireball who can blow apart at any time, and with the events that occur at the end of the text, I feel like Luca will become unhinged quite easily.
Betrayal is what forced Allison into the darkened abyss, creating a young woman whose fear and depression rules her life, but Luca sets her mind and body free at least for awhile until she finds herself once again trapped just with a different capturer. Allison is quite a dynamic heroine because her strengths and weaknesses driver he equally and just when it seems like she’s crippled from depression, she finds the determination to carry on, which is what she’s going to need to do, yet again, with all that goes down in the text.
I didn’t know what to expect heading into Luca; I just knew that I love Gina Whitney’s writing style and the way she allows readers to understand her characters and get into their heads with her in-depth character development. In retrospect, I would have liked to have known that it ends in a bit of a cliffy because it would have thwarted by desire, albeit slightly, to throw my iPad across the room when I was finished reading. I’m not happy with Luca right now, and I don’t see that changing anytime soon, but I also know that there’s a reason for everything in the worlds and characters Whitney creates, so I’m just going to have to trust that she’ll enlighten me when it’s time, and I’ll have to accept the circumstances she created.
A complimentary copy was provided in exchange for an honest review.
4.5 Poison Apples
Gina grew up reading Judy Blume, and Nancy Drew books. She was raised in the town of North Valley Stream, New York(Long Island), and attended community college for fashion design. At 19 years old, she opened a boutique. She’s published four novels so far. Blood Ties(PNR), Beautiful Lies, Saving Abel, Forgiving Gia and soon Luca. When she’s not writing, you can find her with friends and family. She resides in Massapequa, NY with her two beautiful boys. Reading has always been a passion and obsession of hers. You can usually find her typing furiously while shouting obscenities over her latest WIP. Her guilty pleasures are: a good laugh, being snarky, espresso, Pistachio ice-cream, alternative music, sunflower seeds, I.P.A’s, twizzlers, and above all steamy swooning angst filled novels. She’s pathologically obsessed with anything to do with royals, Games of Thrones, White Queen, Vampire Diaries, Resurrection, SOA, The Vikings and The Originals. If you’d like to chat, hit her up on Facebook or Twitter.
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