RELEASE BLITZ: REVIEW AND GIVEAWAY: Finn by Ahren Sanders

I didn’t think Ahren Sanders could create a better hero than Robbie Hayes. There was just something about how he took care of and loved Ember Walker in Salvation that made me fall in love with him. But after reading Finn, I can wholeheartedly say that Finn Black is just as amazing as Robbie is.

I have to admit, though, that I haven’t yet read about Finn’s time in Paris with Raven in Surviving, so my opinion of him heading into Finn was not manipulated by his place in the Raven and Declan ordeal. So maybe I wouldn’t be so head over heels about him if I was privy to those circumstances, but I highly doubt it;)

A safety girl and a risk taker – Presley and Finn couldn’t be more different in how they lived their lives, but when the heart is the main decider on who someone belongs to, the fact that Finn is not in the “safety universe” doesn’t matter, at least when it comes to falling in love.

Finn Black is a balls to the wall kind of guy; he lives to protect and serve, willingly facing danger in order to help those who need him.  As a former Marine, he understands the risks, but the good he can do far outweighs the bad, and when it comes down to it, using his abilities to save other people is what makes Finn who he is.

Presley Chambers has always played it safe because she understands how easily situations can go wrong. Losing her mother at a young age forced her to be the “woman of the house,” which in turn, put her in a position to live for everyone but herself, ensuring that everyone else was taken care of and happy. Fear is a guiding principle in her life, so falling for someone like Finn – a person who looks danger in the eye on a regular basis – was not something she ever thought would happen but god help her because after one meeting, she couldn’t stop herself is she tried.

Finn and Presley easily succumb to the “disease” that has already claimed many of Finn’s friends, and it’s easy to tell from the very beginning of their relationship that they’ve found their “one,” but there are factors and complications, emotional baggage if you will, that threaten to undo the bond between them that seemed to solidify as soon as they met, and with the dangerous situations Finn finds himself in due to his job and Presley’s fears of losing someone else who she loves, their journey to a happily ever after is definitely a tumultuous one, and unless Finn can calm Presley’s fears and ease the emotional torment she feels due to a variety of situations, it doesn’t seem likely that they’ll end up in the same place that Raven and Declan and Robbie and Ember did.

If there’s one quality of Ahren Sanders’ writing that speaks to me as a reader, it’s her ability to construct complex characters who readers are shown instead of told about throughout the text. There are multiple layers to the heroes and heroines in Sanders’ stories, and we are privy to all of them, which allows us to understand everything about each character and reason out why they make the choices that they due in their story, even if we don’t agree with them. It’s easy to tell with how the dual perspective is written that Ahren Sanders lives and breathes her characters as she’s writing them and the storyline she puts them through pushes them in every sense of the word to figure out who they are and what they want from the live they were given.

Finn and Presley’s story is an emotional one, which makes sense due to their pasts and the events that occur during the text. I was pretty much emotionally invested with the couple from the start, which made it both frustrating and overwhelming to witness everything that they have to trudge through to get to a place where they’re both happy and unafraid. But the payoff is so worth the tears and heartache that I experienced while reading, and I’d gladly go through it again with Finn and Presley because they were absolutely meant to be.

A complimentary copy was provided in exchange for an honest review.

5 Poison Apples