Aggro
NA Romance, Contemporary Romance
June 24, 2020
Kindle Unlimited
357
https://amzn.to/2Zv4hjN
Two boys.
One tragedy.
Grief bonds us.
The mystery of this murder will break us.
My best friend was brutally ripped from this world, but her brother and boyfriend are still here.
One of them wants to use me.
The other wants to forget me.
Both of them make me feel alive.
We’ll find Violet’s murderer, no matter the cost.
Two boys.
One tragedy.
Grief bonds us.
Love will tear us apart.
**This is an emotional forbidden romance with dark themes that might be triggering for some readers.
Wow! Let me start out by saying that this book was not what I expected – but in a good way.
I CANNOT read NA romances. There’s just something about them that makes me feel like I need to take a shower. Whether it’s the super immature main characters, the all-too-common thread of the misunderstood bully, or the under aged sex, it all just gives me the “ick”. (I will stop here so I don’t go on a 9 page rant on my hatred for NA).
However, there is always an exception to the rule, and Aggro by Carrie Gray and Coralee June is that exception for me. This book was absolutely amazing, and while it did feature characters that were in high school, that wasn’t the focus.
This will be a mini-review because if I followed my normal format, there would be SPOILAS!
The Story
Violet is the beautiful, popular, out-going high school student that seems to have all things good in her life. Her best friend, Breeze, is the quiet, smart, best friend who grew up alongside Violet and her brother Chase.Violet’s boyfriend, Kai, is the tattooed, older surfer boy that seems to be the outcast of the group.
Violet is turning 18 and throws a party at her absentee parents’ home. All things seem to be going well until a big fight breaks out at the house, forcing Breeze, to leave unexpectedly, only to be “rescued” and driven home by Kai. Unbeknownst to all of them, Violet is fighting for her life.
After her body is found in the woods, Kai, Chase, and Breeze all start to work on theories of who could have killed her. But they never expected that would happen along the journey to finding Violet’s killer.
The Writing
Gray and June spun a thrilling story that made me constantly think, “whodunnit?”. You know that game where you have three cups, and someone puts money or a ball under one of the cups, shuffles them around, and then it’s up to you to guess which one has the prize underneath? That was this book.
Every time you thought you knew who the killer was, they’d shuffle the cups and you’d have to guess all over again.
This book was basically 5 star book UNTIL Gray and June M. Night Shyamalan’d us. Here’s the problem I have with the epilogue. Everything was buttoned up really well and I feel like it was completely unnecessary/forced to have some kind of twist at the very end. And here’s why:
- That person had the skillset to undo what had happened but completely neglected to try?
- There were no signs of empathy throughout the story that would humanize those actions.
- The guilt would eat away too much at someone like that for them to go on “acting” normal.
- The other party in the situation would NOT have reacted like that under any normal circumstance and pushed the book from believable to just completely out there [not in a good way].
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