Falling Into You [Format Kindle]

6 Stars

"I wasn't always in love with Colton Calloway; I was in love with his younger brother, Kyle, first."

Um, wow! I am a bit speechless right now. I did not read the blurb for this book. Jasinda asked Kim and I to read and review, the cover looked awesome so I said ok and just dived right in. Glad I had no clue what the book was about because at about 26% Jasinda rocked my world and handed me my shredded heart on a silver platter. If I had known what I knew at that point beforehand I don't think I would have had the same reaction or connection to Kyle. I loved that I was so clueless. I loved that my heart dived to my stomach and my eyes filled with big fat tears that just kept right on pouring through half the book and then some. Falling into You was filled with a roller coaster of emotions, including angst, love, fear, pain, guilt, and a glimmer of hope.

I adored Nell and Kyle together. I loved that they had been best friends since they were wee tots. Their love was strong and it was a true love, well as true as it could be at 16-18 years old. I found myself smiling over the romantic things Kyle said and did. I was completely and utterly invested in them. Then out of nowhere, Nell's world turned upside down and fell out from beneath her and so did mine. I hurt with her. My heart shattered into pieces for her and Kyle. I felt as broken as Nell did. I wondered how the author was going to pull off her healing, how she would help her move forward past the grief, the pain, the guilt, the loneliness.

"It wasn't a tear. I wouldn't cry. Couldn't. To let it go would be to open my soul. It would never stop. I would break...just shatter. The liquid on my cheek was blood, surging out from my ripped and tattered heart."

Enter Colton Calloway. Colt was perfection wrapped up in his own pain, his own loss. He had walls wrapped so high around his heart, allowing no one in until Nell. Colt lived the life of a bad boy until a few tragedies struck and he found his self-navigating the "straight and narrow." He no longer wanted a life that offered him nothing but destruction. Colt understood the pain and the guilt that riddled Nell. He pushed her, but not so hard that he couldn't catch her when she fell. My heart ached so many times for this misguided man who showed tremendous loyalty, protectiveness, and vulnerability. His choices were not always smart, but they shaped him into the man who will stand strong next to Nell offering her the strength and love she will need to move forward.

"But Colton is...I'm safe with him. He draws the truth out of me. He draws the pain out of me. Colton knows pain. He's intimately familiar with it. Lives with it. Guilt too. Colton has secrets, and I want to know them all."

I was blown away by Colton and his determination to love Nell while helping her face current day reality. Although, he moved slow he didn't enable her, in addition, he also didn't allow her to continue on a destructive path. Colt helped find the courage to search within herself to find the forgiveness she needed from herself in order to move past the guilt she had been holding on to for years. Their relationship was so hard to read at some points. The pain just radiated off the page, it was raw and intense. The need they felt for each other was agonizing and all-consuming at times. Their chemistry was off the charts, and scared the living day lights out of Nell, making her doubt everything she knew with Kyle. Colt and Nell struggled, emotionally and mentally she was a train wreck, but he stood next to her side through it all. Each felt their own brand of guilt as they journeyed through the pain.

"Feel. Grieve. Let yourself feel all the anger at the fact that he was taken from you. Feel the loss of him. Feel the sadness and the missing him. Don't block it out, don't cut so it stops, don't drink yourself numb. Just sit and let it rip you apart. And then get up and keep breathing. One breath at a time. One day at a time. Wake up, and be shredded. Cry for a while. Then stop crying and go about your day. You're not ok, but you're alive, and you will be ok, someday."

"We understand each other, Nelly. We've both have scars and regrets and anger. We can do this together."

This is my first read by Jasinda Wilder, and boy did she wreck my world while slowly placing it all back together piece by piece. This was a story of how light can shine through the bitter darkness and offer a second chance at life. I really enjoyed her writing style, her characters and story line were so well developed. I will definitely search out more reads by her. I also enjoyed the alternating point of views, it helped keep me well invested in them and their outcome. I highly recommend this book and author!

Thank you to Jasinda Wilder for the opportunity to take this wild ride with Nell and Colton. Author provided an ARC of Falling into You in exchange for an honest review.

Run, don't walk, your little fingers over to the buy button to get this book. Falling Into You destroyed my emotions on every possible level. It's no secret that there is death and love in this book, but the depths Jasinda takes us into the lives of the characters is overwhelming. Over and over, her words of struggle and of love and of friendship and of loss wrapped around my heart, forcing me to fall into the story. Books like The Sea of Tranquility, Hopeless, and The Edge of Never have taken me over the edge of emotion like Falling Into You, and like those Falling Into You will stick with me for a very long time. HIGHLY recommended.

This is a complex and mature tale of tragedy and romance. The main character - Nell - struggles to come to terms with the death of her first love Kyle, and struggles to accept the love of his brother Colton, though her feelings for him run even deeper. There are definitely lessons to be learned from this, with regard to coming to terms with feelings of grief and guilt etc.

We follow Nell from an innocent 16 year old girl to a mature woman (in both a sexual and romantic sense), who is in a lot of pain. I always enjoy it when a story switches from two points of view (as this book does in Part 2, between Colton and Nell), as it's always interesting to read the internal dialogue of another character, which also gives us a greater understanding of and empathy with them.

The bedroom scenes are on fire (reminding me of the steamy scenes in My Nights With Kate) and just when I thought they couldn't get better, they did!! They are mature, intense and have an extra layer of depth added due to the circumstances that the characters find themselves in. The book is not saturated with gratuitous love scenes, and the ones that are included are relevant to the storyline serving to establish the developing emotional and physical intimacy between the characters.

It's absolutely no surprise that this book is a Bestseller! It's a very meaty and intense modern take on the traditional age-old tale of romance founded in tragic circumstances. You will be hooked from the start until the end (it's a reasonably lengthy book, not a novella, so you will probably have to take a break at some point!). As with all other reviewers here, I highly recommend it!!