Because of you by RaShelle Workman

Genre: Contemporary, New Adult, Romance, Suspense, Thriller

Pages: 244

Published by Curiosity Quills Press

Release date: January 18th, 2016

There’s a first time for everything… and sometimes that means a first time at a second chance.

It’s been seven years since Maddie Martin’s parents died. Their killer wasn’t just a random stranger, but her best friends’ father. Kyle Hadley. The boy she’s been in love with since she was old enough to understand the emotion, the boy she promised all of her firsts to. Worst of all, Kyle’s father got away with it, and Maddie hasn’t seen Kyle since.

That changes on her first day of college. Seeing Kyle again brings back all of her childhood feelings of friendship and love for him, but it also brings back the anger, sorrow, and pain she’s been trying to bury because of his father.

***

Kyle Hadley has no idea why Maddie quit talking to him, especially when he needed her most. But he got over it, refusing to waste his life mourning the only girl he ever loved. There are too many women, too much of life to experience to bother thinking about Maddie. Except he does. And when he sees her again, he knows it.

But there are problems beyond Kyle and Maddie and their old feelings. The two of them are in danger and one or both might end up dead.

This book is a part of a Review Tour presented by Curiosity Quills.

Maddie is just starting college and she’s feeling a heavy weight on her form. When Maddie was only eleven her parents were killed in cold blood, she witnessed the crime and saw the two murder suspects but when she was being questioned she was threatened as not to say a word of it. She didn’t want to, not when one of the suspects was, in fact, her best friends father and next door neighbor.

Kyle is Maddie’s childhood friend and neighbor, when they were young they made a pact to share all their firsts, but unexpectedly Maddie’s parents are murdered and she moves away without saying a word.

Now, Maddie is in college and she sees Kyle for the first time, she’s riddled with anxiety and has PTSD from the traumatic events as a child. It’s not determined whether he’s going to be good or bad for her, but judging by the fact he doesn’t seem to remember who she is….

This story was intriguing! And Workman really worked emotion into her characters which gave them real depth to them, however, there were times that Maddie seemed a little too indecisive as well as emotional. She is wishy washy on her thoughts and it became tiring. She isn’t that strong of a character but she does pull herself together and it seems just as she does things explode.

I enjoyed Kyle’s character a little more because you got to see his point of view and how it all changed him, the trouble he stumbled into, how he cleaned himself up and where he is now. You also get to see how Maddie’s wishy-washyness steadily frustrates him, but he remains there for her constantly.

At times the book kind of dragged, but toward the end things really picked up and took a direction I wasn’t at all expecting. I wish the entire book had the same tempo as the last, but this book was really quick to read regardless. I enjoyed it!

It had a Colleen Hoover feel to it, broken characters trying to repair one another. So I definitely recommend it to fans of Hoover!

3.5 stars are more appropriate than a 3.

★★★☆☆

RaShelle Workman is the author of the popular Blood and Snow series. She loves to reinvent fairy tales readers can sink their teeth into. Her stories include vampires, werewolves, witches, aliens, and creatures of her own creation. Her books: Sleeping Roses, Exiled, Beguiled, and Dovetailed have foreign rights contracts with a Turkish publisher. RaShelle is also one of the co- founders of IndiePUBCon. Currently, she lives in Utah with her husband, three children, and their three dogs.

Visit http://www.rashelleworkman.com to join RaShelle’s EXCLUSIVE mailing list and be entered to win a signed paperback copy of Blood and Snow volumes 1-4 (Special Edition). And be sure to like her Facebook page for all the latest news: https://www.facebook.com/rashelleworkman.

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