The One You Fight For - Review

The One You Fight For (The Ones Who Got Away, # 3)

By: Roni Loren

Publication: January 1st 2019 by Sourcebooks Casablanca

416 pages

Genre: Adult, Contemporary

Source: Publisher via NetGalley (Thank you!!)

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Goodreads description--How hard would you fight for the one you love? Taryn Landry was there that awful night fourteen years ago when Long Acre changed from the name of a town to the title of a national tragedy. Everyone knows she lost her younger sister. No one knows it was her fault. Since then, psychology professor Taryn has dedicated her life's work to preventing something like that from ever happening again. Falling in love was never part of the plan...

Shaw Miller has spent more than a decade dealing with the fallout of his brother's horrific actions. After losing everything―his chance at Olympic gold, his family, almost his sanity―he's changed his name, his look, and he's finally starting a new life. As long as he keeps a low profile and his identity secret, everything will be okay, right?

When the world and everyone you know defines you by one catastrophic tragedy...
How do you find your happy ending?

I normally do not read books in a series out of order like this. But for some reason, I got pulled into the description and cover and everything for this book. And I figured if I liked this one, I could go back and read the prior two books in the series. Considering that each book follows a different main character, reading these out of order shouldn't be too much of a problem.

The One You Fight For completely pulled me in. I had so many questions that were propelling me through the story. I read 50% quickly, but then I became disappointed. The book took a 20% detour from the main storyline for the characters to have sex. I don't enjoy descriptive scenes like this. Perhaps the genre should have given this away for me though. Regardless, I was really disappointed with this and skimmed ahead through this section. But I was disappointed because I felt like the story stood on its own without having to throw this detailed section in the middle of the book.

Given the topic, I really appreciated that Roni Loren didn't turn this book political. It was just a story and not an agenda or a message. Speaking of that, at first, I was a little disappointed that Taryn's program wasn't spelled out a little bit more. I wanted to know more about it in a show vs tell kind of way. But then I figured if there was some epic program out there to prevent school shootings then it would be implemented around the country already. Nevertheless, I'm so glad that this book wasn't about spreading a message. I hate when authors do that and given the content it could have easily headed in that direction.

The One You Fight For hooked me early, but I found myself confused and disappointed when we took a 20% detour for the characters to hook up. I want to know the stories of the other characters, but I can only imagine that the descriptive scenes aren't unique to this book alone so I'll probably skip them. The One You Fight For gets 3 Stars from me. And I'm kind of sad about that because I likely would have enjoyed it so much more if I didn't have to skim 20% of the book for some filler sex scenes. Have you read The One You Fight For? What did you think? Let me know!