Wreck Me (Nova, # 4)
By: Jessica Sorensen
Publication: October 22nd 2014
350 pages
Genre: New Adult, Contemporary
Source: Personal Kindle Library
)
*Note: The above link to Amazon is an affiliate link. Affiliate links support giveaways for Somewhere Only We Know readers.
Goodreads description--Once upon a time there was a girl named Avery Hensley who thought she’d found the guy—the one that she thought she was going to spend the rest of her life with. They got married young and had the most beautiful son in the world.Life seemed perfect.
But not everything is what it seems.
Turned out the guy had another side to him, one Avery didn’t see coming. He wrecked her and broke her into a thousand pieces that she had to put back together again. She swore off guys from then on, vowing never to let anyone hurt her or her son again. She built a wall around herself and planned on never letting anyone through it again.
But then she meets Tristan Morganson. He wrecks Avery in a different way, the kind of way that makes her feel free again, the kind of way that makes her think not all guys are bad. But can Avery trust him enough to let her wall come crumbling down?
First off, I don’t know that anyone would want to pick up Wreck Me without reading Tristan: Finding Hope first. At the time that I read Tristan: Finding Hope, I kind of wondered the same thing. I mean that’s where Tristan and Avery actually meet, and there’s a good bit that happens as setup that is really necessary to know when going into Wreck Me. I can’t say that I was fully paying attention to whether or not someone could read Wreck Me without having read Tristan: Finding Hope first, but I can definitely say that I wouldn’t advise it.
As often happens when I’m reading a series and there’s a side character that has a pretty prominent role, I tend to try to figure out what that character is thinking and feeling based on their actions. But often times once I’m able to read from that character’s perspective, things aren’t quite the way I imagined them. I’ve been getting mixed messages about Tristan throughout the series. During Breaking Nova and Saving Quinton, Tristan seems to be Quinton’s gateway into this life of drugs and various other horribleness. While meth is a no joke drug, Tristan’s preferred drug of choice seemed to be heroine, which Quinton doesn’t branch out into until he’s hit rock bottom. But yet, Tristan didn’t ever seem to have the emotional reasons that Quinton did to get into drugs in the first place. And Tristan went to rehab and got clean first. Yet as I said, all is not as it appears. Turns out, Tristan does have emotional reasons (even though no reason is good enough) to seek solace in drugs. And just because Tristan got clean first doesn’t mean anything. He shows how truly difficult it is to stay clean and how addiction always stays with you.
Avery’s history is no picnic. She grew up around drugs. Her mother is an addict and all she ever wanted to do was “get out”. Get out of that house, get out of that town, get out of that lifestyle. So she latches on to the first hope she sees for escape. It just happens to be via an unworthy man. Though Conner doesn’t appear to have any addictions when he and Avery first meet, he gets dragged into that world, and Avery allows herself to get pulled in as well. Avery would have to have had such a background, I think, in order to make a good match for Tristan. Tristan would have a much harder time trusting that she’s not going to view him as complete trash had she not had her own history of mistakes behind her.
Tristan and Avery’s story does have a little too much parallel for me. Jessica Sorensen not only swaps narrators between both characters, but she also chooses to insert flashbacks from both characters too. For some reason, I don’t seem to mind when a character is having a memory. Yet, I find myself annoyed when the past is written as if it’s the present. You know…like time-jumping. That just doesn’t always sit right with me. So add to that the fact that Tristan and Avery were often experiencing very similar circumstances and events “at the exact same time” throughout their pasts and present. I don’t know…I guess when two characters’ lives are too similar or they think the same word-for-word thoughts I just find that hard to believe. So this aspect of Wreck Me wasn’t my favorite.
I did enjoy that Tristan and Avery had a pretty slow building relationship. A connection was already there from when they met before, but they took time to get to know each other. Each one had to come to terms with their past and find a way to share what they’d been through with the other. It felt authentic. But once things start happening they happen perhaps a little too quickly. The physical boundaries are blown. And the conflict of Avery’s ex-husband, Conner, just seemed to be solved too easily for me.
Wreck Me was a pretty enjoyable read. I was hooked into the story quickly once I got started, and I didn’t really want to put it down. I had a few small issues with the parallels of Tristan and Avery’s pasts, the jumps in chronology, and with how quickly things wrapped up, but that didn’t really change my overall feel of the book. Wreck Me gets 4 Stars. Do be aware about language though. Jessica Sorensen’s characters have no qualms with the f-bomb. Have you read Wreck Me? What did you think? Let me know!
