Review of Into The Storm

Synopsis

She is a woman on the run. Pain, loneliness and terror are what she is leaving. Where she is headed doesn’t matter as long as it’s away from the hell her life has become.

Joshua Bennett is trapped in a prison of his own making by the memories of his past. Traumatized and isolated, he is a reclusive writer, living a quiet, lonely life, his only companion his dog, Bear. It is what he knows, what he has accepted to be his life.

One dark night, one huge storm, and one ice patch brings them together. He finds himself with an unexpected houseguest with no memory. She wakes up a stranger to herself and the man watching her. Even more mysterious is the lack of any sort of identification with her or in her car. She is an enigma to both of them.

Trapped by the storm and isolated from the outside world, they slowly open up, learning to trust and love, until the world once again shows up, threatening the fragile peace of their newly discovered world, and tearing them apart.

There are many twists and turns as they struggle to find each other, overcoming both the mental and physical elements that keep them apart.

A story about overcoming our fears, finding love and learning to live again.

Goodreads | Amazon | Amazon UK

Review

This book sat in my queue for a while as I never seemed to be in the mood for a story revolving around someone with amnesia.  I was sorry I put it off after I read the first few chapters though because the premise really drew me in.  The book starts with her fleeing someone who abused her.  You don’t know who the abuser is or her particular circumstances but you know the threat is very real.  Then she gets turned around in a horrendous winter storm and ends up crashing her car and sustains a head injury.  She is rescued by a reluctant hero who tries to help her piece together the mystery of who she is and their relationship develops from there.  Of course, there are some significant hurdles for them to overcome and there were times it was a really tense read because I knew something bad was coming but I didn’t know exactly what would occur.  There is a happily ever after and there is some karmic retribution but I feel kind of ambivalent about the story on a whole even though it had some good things going for it.

 

The premise of the book is great.  She manages to escape her abuse only to have no recollection of it when she comes to.  Rather than those stories you read where the heroine is simply too ashamed or scared to share her burden with someone, she can’t, and as a result, ends up thrown back to the wolves until her handsome knight finds a way to rescue her.  Another great thing about this book is the dog, bear.  He is an instant protector and I loved how his personality was portrayed whenever his owner displeased him.  The author also writes a fabulous villain.  The control, isolation and abuse he inflicts upon the heroine are starkly defined and definitely pull you into her plight.

 

As for what I didn’t quite enjoy about the book, I didn’t really get into the initial development of the relationship between the two main characters.  The hero behaves a little erratically and that really threw me off because I couldn’t buy into the subsequent progression of their relationship.  The relationship certainly grew on me and I will say that, by the end of the story, it felt like a rather epic love story but my initial disconnect kept me from enjoying a substantial chunk of the book.  I didn’t really like how the main conflict was resolved and felt supreme frustration with all of the people who turned a blind eye to what was going on.  The karmic end was awesome but a little too tidy and convenient.  The story is also rather long which usually is not a negative for me but there is a difference when a story feels long and this one did.  I appreciated that the author tied up every loose end and gave those glimpses into the future that we rarely get enough of but it felt like we were flipping through their life to hit all the milestones which didn’t flow very well. 

 

So, in conclusion, while I really enjoyed the premise of the story and there were aspects that I really enjoyed, there were enough detractors and missteps that I didn’t get to enjoy the book in its entirety.  I don’t regret reading it because there were certainly parts that I connected with emotionally and I was anxious to see what would happen next but the overall execution was just missing something from my standpoint.

Try it for yourself! Goodreads | Amazon | Amazon UK

Katie