I wanted…so many things.

I was a boiling mess with deep emotions churning in my belly ready to explode in a vomit of screams and rant.

Synopsis

I crawled into Ryan Jensen’s bed that first night by accident.I barely knew him. I thought it was his sister’s bed—her room. It took seconds to realize my error, and I should’ve left…

I didn’t.
I didn’t jump out.
I didn’t get embarrassed.
I relaxed.
And that night, in that moment, it was the only thing I craved.

I asked to stay. He let me, and I slept.

The truth? I never wanted to leave his bed. If I could’ve stayed forever, I would have.
He became my sanctuary.

Because—four hours earlier—my twin sister killed herself.

GOODREADS  AMAZON

Review

5 raw stars

I received this ARC from the author in exchange for an honest opinion

Pfew! Where do I begin this review as my head is a mess right now?

Honestly the first chapters were just good but not very good for me. I thought “What have I done requesting this ARC? My rating will be a disaster!”

Mackenzie was a mess. She did not cry, she ignored the reality of what happened if she could, she fled in Ryan’s bed. Ryan became her crutch. The one person she latched onto to stay sane. The one who did not look at her like she was “the girl who lost her twin”. Some said she was a leech and that’s exactly how I saw her in the beginning.

What was she doing? She was channeling her dead sister so many times. She was impersonating Willow and even if I did not really know the Mackenzie “before” I did not want her to become a clone of Willow. I wanted to shout: stop being reckless. Stop trying to be her! Be you!

But that would have meant “Stop hurting! Stop coping as you can! Stop grieving!” and that wouldn’t have been right.

Because what Tijan did here is tell us everyone is grieving in his own way. There isn’t a good or bad way to grieve. You just do it the best you can. You can ignore what happened. Deny! Deny with all that you’ve got.

Or you can acknowledge but can’t stand it, not looking at your daughter anymore because she reminds you of what you’ve lost. Mackenzie was Willow’s twin and her parents could not bear to look at her anymore.

I wanted to beat her parents. Seriously! I wanted to scream “Look at her! She lost her TWIN! Her other half! She is hurting and doing all kind of crazy and you don’t care!”.

I wanted…so many things.

I was a boiling mess with deep emotions churning in my belly ready to explode in a vomit of screams and rant.

That’s when you know the author did a brilliant work.

Tijan got me all in the story. Guts, heart and soul. Whole. With my leaky eyes. With my table filled with tissues. With my dog looking all frightened at her moma crying because Mackenzie and all this family HURT.

I thought at first that Ryan was very good for Mackenzie of course but I was slightly disappointed as he seemed not as Alpha as what Tijan’s got me used to when it comes to her heroes. Think Mason one of my top 5 book boyfriends channeling all the power and charisma. Being the biggest wolf of the pack. But all is embodied in one word above: “seemed”. By the end I knew that Ryan for all his calm and cool façade, his strength was undeniably Alpha.

I realize now that this review is messy as I did not speak about the plot or gave really coherent thoughts. That’s because my thoughts were not coherent. I was not thinking I was feeling!

Kudos to you Tijan because you tackled some really heavy topics here: grief, suicide, death and all the ways to Sunday to cope or not with it. You wrote that this book changed you. I can tell you it overflowed me like a tidal wave of sadness. By the end of my read I was stunned by unforeseen twists the biggest being the ending and I’ve been left with a whole new appreciation of your talent. I already loved your books but now you’ve really won my utmost respect for the intelligence and the raw truth of this story.

Here is an excerpt of Tijan’s acknowledgement:

“This book was so hard to write, not in the way where I felt like I was taking a chainsaw to a glacier, but in the way where I cried almost every time I wrote it or worked on it.”

“No sequel is planned and I left the ending how it is because I hope it will make you think. I hope it will make you reread the book, but see it in an almost totally different way. Out of all the books I’ve written, this is the only one that has changed me as a person.”

Have you read this book? Plan to? Do you love Tijan’s books?

Thanks for reading.

Sophie