Friday, August 8, 2014

Revenge Bound - Heidi Joy Tretheway

Third in a four book series centered on the band Tattoo Thief.  Book one centers on Gavin and Beryl.  Book two, Tyler and Stella, deals with, well, you know.  This book can stand alone, but reading the series in order is a good idea anyway; you have more "insider knowledge" that way.

I love Heidi Joy Tretheway, I love the Tattoo Thief series, and I love Jayce McKittrick. I don't care if he's fictional, I want a Jayce of my own.

As I've said of Tretheway before (when reviewing Stella and Tyler's story), her writing gets better and better and better. Every outing is better than the last. This book is so well-written, and so well put together, and clearly so well researched (about revenge porn, among other things) that you just can't find anything to quibble with.


Jayce is a hot rock star with a sense of humor and need for control. He's also quite the stereotypical man whore, dragging a trail of groupies and easy one-night stands wherever he goes. He's happy with his no-strings attached, let's all have fun and then move on policy, until he meets Violet. She's different and she's special, and he knows it from the word go.


Violet is a teacher, an artist, and a photographer. She's been hurt, she doesn't trust easily, and she's trying to make a life for herself after a really bad relationship ends. To add to her problems, she starts getting very dirty, very scary texts which lead her to discover that there are naked pictures of her posted on the internet. Photos that were never supposed to see the light of day.


Revenge porn is a real thing, people.  This book, in addition to being fun, and full of love, romance, and some sizzling sex to boot, is a cautionary tale: what you put on the internet stays on the internet.  Forever.  For. Ev.  Er.


I'm not telling you anything more about the plot, other than to say that it's worth the trip. Read this book! Violet and Jayce are real people and they have a story to tell. It's a cautionary one about how bad things happen to good people. It's a hopeful one, about how making changes can and does happen. And it's a love story. Of course it is. Tretheway writes some of the best love stories you're ever going to run across.


I enjoyed this book immensely. The dialogue is real, and relateable, and a lot of it stuff I've heard come out of my own mouth. Jayce is a lot more than just a rock star, just a hottie, just a womanizer. He's a real guy with big decisions to make, big concerns to address, and a big case of lust for the beautiful red-haired woman whom chance tosses into his life.


Please do yourself a favor and read Revenge Bound. Because it's worth it to see two scared, reticent people make their way to one another, and because the things that are there to be overcome only make the story more compelling. But mostly, read this book because Heidi Joy Tretheway is a really terrific writer, with a real voice, who deserves your attention. Romance is not as easy to write as so many seem to think; Tretheway, however, certainly makes it seem like it is!



As always, click on the pic to buy the book.  You won't regret it!