Title: Fighting Redemption
Release Date: December 2, 2013
TOP READ FOR 2013 by 22 Book Blogs
✦★☆ Reviews by Tammy & Kim voted Fighting Redemption BEST BOOK OF 2013!☆★✦
✦★☆ Give Me Books voted Fighting Redemption TOP BOOK OF 2013 and ALL TIME FAVOURITE!☆★✦
✦★☆ Sinfully Sexy Book Reviews voted Fighting Redemption AND Give Me Strength in their TOP BOOKS OF 2013!☆★✦
What reviewers are saying about Fighting Redemption
6 Stars! I just want to shout from the rooftops -- READ THIS BOOK,
EVERYONE!!!! Fighting Redemption was everything I could want
in a story and more!! It's an unforgettable story about a broken soldier's
undying love for a woman who'd always held his heart. I loved every word of this
powerful, captivating and emotionally charged book. This is a must-read!! Truly
breathtaking! Aestas Book Blog
"5 ++++ Beautiful and Emotional
Stars! This was a love story in every sense of the word. It was
highly emotive, beautiful, moving, tragic, romantic, passionate, haunting and
breathtaking which all makes up to this being one of our favourite reads of
2013." Totally Booked
"Fighting Redemption is heartbreaking, gut punching, inspiring, and
beautiful. This is an amazing, poignant journey that I will never
forget and goes beyond 5 stars for me and is one of the rare ones that I have to
give 6 stars." Reviews by Tammy & Kim
"5 stars - 6 if I could! It's
nigh on impossible to put into words how much I loved this book and how
much it touched me. Fighting Redemption is unforgettable, powerful, incredibly
moving and it will live on my heart for months and years to come."
Sinfully Sexy Book Reviews
Ryan Kendall is
broken. He understands pain. He knows the hand of violence and the ache of
loss. He knows what it means to fail those who need you. Being broken doesn’t
stop him wanting the one thing he can’t have; Finlay Tanner. Her smile is sweet
and her future bright. She’s the girl he grew up with, the girl he loves, the
girl he protects from the world, and from himself.
At nineteen, Ryan leaves to join the Australian Army. After
years of training he becomes an elite SAS soldier and deploys to the
Afghanistan war. His patrol undertakes the most dangerous missions a soldier
can face. But no matter how far he runs, or how hard he fights, his need for
Finlay won’t let go.
Returning home after six years, one look is all it takes to know
he can’t live without her. But sometimes love isn’t enough to heal what hurts.
Sometimes people like him can’t be fixed, and sometimes people like Finlay
deserve more than what’s left.
This is a story about war and the cost of sacrifice. Where bonds
are formed, and friendships found. Where those who are strong, fall hard. Where
love is let go, heartache is born, and heroes are made. Where one man learns
that the hardest fight of all, is the fight to save himself.
(can I give a book 10 stars? is that allowed? Hell. It's my blog. I'm giving it 10 damn stars.)
I'm going to try to get through this review without sobbing (not that you could see if I was, but I'm sure I will be at some point).
"Fighting Redemption" was, hands down, my book of the year. I asked on my blog Facebook page for an ugly cry book that will make my heart hurt, and this one was recommended to me about 10 times in 20 minutes. I had to read it. Military? Afghanistan? I just had to read it. Books involving this war, hit me hard, really hard. My father is retired-Marine. I have numerous friends who joined the Military after high school (I graduated less than a year after 9/11), and some that are still in the Military, now. Okay, right, moving on to the actual book..
Fighting Redemption, is a second-third-fourth-chance romance, involving the boy-next-door-slash-brothers-best-friend who has lived in his own personal hell for years. Ryan has been in Fin's life since they were in elementary school. Ryan, best friends with Fin's older brother, Jake, has taken on a protective role towards Fin since they were little. But that protective role, moved over into romantic feelings, as they both grew older. They lost touch when he left for the Military with Jake, and it's been 6 years since they have spoken to, or seen each other. So when Jake is coming home on semi-leave to his shared house with Fin, and asks Ryan to come? Well.. you can see where things may go.
But this book isn't just about the romance between Fin and Ryan. No. It's about family, blood and otherwise. It's about Brothers. It's about how the Military can effect your every day life. How you feel not exactly tied down to anywhere, because you can be called out on a dime. How you're scared to love, and put someone through a deployment. How sometimes, friends and family, just won't come home.
It really is, about Heroes.
(ooh.. dammit.. here come the tears)
"and then you come home and everyone is going about their everyday lives - shopping and working, being impatient or unkind, and I want to shout at them all to wake up and see how lucky they are."
But it is, also, about a love that just won't go away, even if it isn't the best thing for them. In some cases, love CAN conquer all, and in others.. it's just not enough.
"I have a thick skin baby… but you're under it. You're buried in there so deep it's like I was born with you in my soul."
But in the end, love is love, and you can't fight love. You can only fight what you do with it.
"I won't ever stop. I'll love you longer than the stars that live in the sky."
I'm not sure I can actually explain how much I adored this book, as well as Kate McCarthy's writing. In the back of the book, she notes how many Australian SAS soldiers she cross checked the reality of Military members and family with. That, my friends, is dedication, and it makes this story hit home that much harder, because everything in this book, is someone else's reality.
"Fighting Redemption" had me crying from 4% into the book, and takes quite a few unexpected turns that had me downright sobbing. But the ease of Fin and Jake's bond, and Fin and Ryan's friendship and relationship, make it a bit easier to handle, and had me smiling ear to ear. There is humor to break the heaviness of this book, and it works perfectly. There are side characters that add so much to the story. There is a huge sense of family, and brotherhood, and love, that is carried through from the first page, to the last. My heart broke and then healed, just to break again. And when I felt my heart in pieces, Kate McCarthy found ways to mend it right back together through her words.
This will now be one of the first books I recommend to anyone asking, "Hey, what should I read next?".
Favorite Quote:
"Ask me, Fin, what I see when I look up at all those stars."
"What do you see?"
"You."
Kate
McCarthy grew up in a small town outside of Port Macquarie, Australia. Raised
in a house just a short walk to the beach, Kate enjoyed the peaceful, relaxed
atmosphere and friendships that come from being raised in a friendly, small
town area.
She now
resides in Brisbane, Australia, a city in the state of Queensland where she
works as an accountant, along with a sideline wedding cake business and her
writing.
She is
married with two children, has two dogs and house in the suburbs, and a pile of
friends and family dotted all over the country that help keep her sane.
When she’s
not busy running after naughty kids, filthy dogs, crunching numbers, piping
buttercream and writing books, you can find her curled up in bed in the early
hours of the morning reading new books and re-reading old favourites. Her
favourite books are the Black Dagger Brotherhood series by J.R. Ward in which
she longs to eventually join the brotherhood and change her name to Phierce
Mutha.
a Rafflecopter giveaway
Posts
0 comments:
Post a Comment