I discovered the True North series a couple of months ago when I won the first book for a reading challenge. Now with Steadfast, its English title, the great ride went on and I am again thrilled. Though this book was different from the first, the style darker and nothing sugar-coated, it was a fantastic read I absolutely enjoyed. Sarina Bowen has a hand for emotions. There is nothing kitschy in here and if you are looking for a book that is swooning all over the place you are in the wrong place. The author writes about real drama, you can´t get more realistic than she does when it comes to the cruel and bitter reality of drug abuse and its consequences.
True North-Schon Immer Nur Wir*
by Sarina BowenTrue North Series #2
Original Title Steadfast
Publisher LYX July 21, 2017
Genre Love-Women-Erotica
Pages 397
Format Softcover
Source Publisher
Goodreads
✶✶✶✶½
She´s the only one who ever loved him – and the only one he can never have. Just lost everything one spring day when he crashed his car into an apple tree on the side of the road. A man is dead, and there´s no way he can ever right that wrong. He´d steer clear of Colebury, Vermont forever if he could. But an ex-con in recovery for his drug addiction can´t find a job just anywhere. For Sophie Haines, coming face to face with the man who broke her heart is gut-wrenching. Suddenly, he´s everywhere she turns. It´s hard not to stare at how much he´s changed. The bad boy who used to love her didn´t have big biceps and sun-kissed hair. And he´d never turn up volunteer in the church kitchen. She knows it´s foolish to yearn for the man who returned all the heartsick letters she wrote him in prison. But the looks he sends her now speak volumes. No one wants to Sophie and Jude back together, least of all Sophie´s police chief father. But it´s a small town. And forbidden love is a law unto itself.
Story
Jude is back home, after years in prison and with a lifelong fight ahead of him because he is in recovery from his drug addiction. Where others were drinking beer and smoking cigarettes while they were eighteen, he sniffed narcotics. Stupid, yes, and he had to learn his lesson the hard way, but he learned it. Now, back in the small town where his life changed from one second to the other, he not only faces the bitterness one family still has against him but also that life hasn´t stopped while he was gone. And that he wasn´t the only one, whose life changed for the worse.
Style
Sarina Bowen´s writing style is sensitive but also blunt. She doesn´t hide or sugarcoat the fact that you have to deal with your addiction for the rest of your life once you are clean. And she shows the bitter and painful consequences it can have for an addict if he is put against his will again under the drug he fights to stay away from every day. Or how a tyrant father tortures his daughter only because he believes that she isn´t worth to be alive.
Steadfast is full of emotions, passion, dark moments and yet you´ll find a warmth and fantastic atmosphere in this book that you probably wouldn´t imagine. The author writes in a perfect touching and emotional way about two families who try to deal with the cards life gave them and to fight for their future. The healing process on both sides was set up beautifully in a novel where the main thing is the one true love. And I was totally thrilled that the Shipley family was again involved in the story.
Characters
A tyrant as a father, a mother who doesn´t live in the real world anymore, a young woman who takes care of parents who don´t see her and young man who will have to fight for the rest of his life his addiction. In Steadfast the figures are profound, convincing and there was more than one moment where I could have slapped that tyrant father or the mother to stop what they were doing.
Sophie never got to live her dream. Instead, she is at the whim and will of her brutal father, who punishes her for his son´s death by ignoring her, calling her bitch, and expects her to live her life the way he wants it. The moment when she starts to break out of her misery, when she starts asking inconvenient questions and to do want she wants, she is in the spotlight of her father. And when she discovers the truth about him and the night her brother died, her life is at stake.
Jude is an extraordinary man who stuns not only the padre whom he helps every Wednesday in the kitchen but also the doctors and nurses when he tells them what he does to stay clean. The one scene in the hospital was heartbreaking and made me furious at the same time.
Conclusion
This second book was not at all the way how the first one of this series was. The style of the author was the same, but the rest holy smokes! This book contains the in my eye perfect mix of romance, dark tone, drama and passion, and some very hot stuff. If you enjoyed the first book then you will love this one.
Happy reading
*This book was kindly provided to me by LYX in exchange for an honest and unbiased review. Thank you. Therefore, the cover of the German edition is shown first in this review.
*The book was originally published Steadfast by Rennie Roads Books on July 10, 2016
Sarina Bowen
Sarina Bowen is the USA Today bestselling author of steamy Contemporary Romance and New Adult fiction. She lives with her family in Vermont´s Green Mountains. In 2016, she became a Rita Award winner.
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