Title: Devil You Know
Series: Lost Boys #1
Author: L.A. Fiore
Genre: Contemporary Romantic Suspense
Release Date: 10 March 2017
Blurb
Damian Tate. One look into his sad green eyes and I was hooked. I wanted to be the one to make him laugh, to make him smile. I hadn't expected him to be the one to make me blush, to make me hot...to make me fall in love. He was my first kiss, my first love, my first everything. I wanted forever with him, but life got in the way.
He enlisted, I went to college, and for years we were never in the same place long enough to pick up where we left off.
Thirteen years after he left, tragedy brings him home. The stoic boy I fell in love with grew into a quiet, dangerous and wildly sexy man. He still tugs on all the right strings for me, but he seems determined to keep me at arm's-length.
However, when trouble comes knocking at my door, he is the one to put himself between that trouble and me.
Spending time with him might drive me insane, or it might be our second chance at first love.
Purchase Links
AMAZON US / UK / CA / AU
Review
This is a second chance romance and first book in the Lost
Boys series. The story is extensive and covers over a period of time of over a
decade. Therefore this is a long read.
Damien is abandoned by his father at a young age and is left
with an abusive and uncaring mother. With a life with no love or support,
Damien feels he is very much on his own. But then he strikes up a friendship
that is the catalyst for a great change in his life when he meets Cam. However
it is when he sees a picture of Cams’ twin sister, Thea, that Damien is forever
tied to this curly haired beauty. Having a difficult home life, Damien spends
more and more time at Cam and Thea’s loving home and over the years is looked
on as a surrogate child in the family.
Damien has always held an affinity with Thea but it isn’t
until they are seventeen that this flows into the flush of young love. Being
young though they both have dreams with Damien wanting to enlist in the army
and Thea to go away to study. Each do not want to hold the other back and Thea
therefore encourages Damien to leave. From then on the story is an intense and sometimes
heart wrenching read of their separate lives and how they finally find their
place in life together again.
The backstory was also intense and full of drama, with dirty
cops, the mafia and underhand friendships. I must admit though I guessed
correctly at who the wrong doer was. There was some extreme sadness that the
family had to overcome and therefore very emotional.
The difficulty that I found with this read though was
Damien. To me he was so overly complex and complicated that I had difficulty in
understanding his actions at times that I didn’t fully connect with his
character. There were moments where I just wanted to slap him upside the head
and tell him to get over himself. How Thea put up with his bizarre behaviour
was beyond me. So I had some eye rolling and sighing episodes. A little too
much over the top of the silent enigmatic alpha for me here (and I am usually
all over that character type believe me!).
Overall though a deep and engaging book that kept you
turning the pages, wanting to know who the baddie was and when would Thea and
Damien finally come to be. It took a long time with lots of angst and drama in
between some sweet and some sexy interludes. A four star read for me.
ARC kindly provided by the author to Foxylutely Books blog in exchange for an honest review
Excerpt
Before I could scan the crowd for Damian, a hand wrapped around mine...one with cuts and blood on the knuckles. It was Damian and he looked pissed.
“What the fuck are you doing here?”
My heart hurt seeing his face—a cut near his left eye, blood smeared down his cheek and a blooming bruise on his jaw. “I heard you and Cam talking. I was curious.”
He had been walking me toward the exit but those words stopped him. His feet sort of rooted themselves to the concrete floor as his head turned in my direction. “So you walked here alone?”
“It wasn’t far.”
That wasn’t the right answer apparently because he hissed between his teeth. It wasn’t an actual word, just a release of frustration.
He started toward the exit again. “What are you fighting when you are out there?”
We had just reached the stairs when he pulled me behind them and pressed me up against the wall. “Come again?”
“When you fight, what are you fighting?”
“Not who am I fighting?”
“No, your opponent isn’t what you’re fighting.”
He leaned in and lowered his head to look me right in the eyes. “How do you know that?”
I gently wiped the blood from his face. “I know you.”
He had the strangest reaction to that. He closed his eyes, like he was in pain, and lowered his forehead to my shoulder. “This can’t happen.”
Those words caused a chill to move right down my spine. He was wrong. It totally could and should happen. “Why not?”
He lifted his head and for the first time I saw so much more in those eyes. “Cam is a good friend and your parents are like my own.”
“And?”
His lips brushed along my jaw and I had to lock my knees to keep from sliding down the wall. “And if I did to you all the things I wanted, I couldn’t sit at their table without them knowing that I claimed every part of you.”
Author Bio
L.A. Fiore is the author of several books including: Beautifully Damaged, Beautifully Forgotten, Beautifully Decadent, His Light in the Dark and A Glimpse of the Dream. She's also the social secretary for her two children, a tamer of ill-mannered cats, the companion to one awesome dog and married to her best friend. She likes her wine red, her shrimp chilled and her social gatherings small and intimate.
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