Nothing Left to Lose
by: Kirsty Moseley
My Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
Date Completed: April 2, 2014
So this is my first review on my blog! Exciting for me because I am no one special. I am just a huge book nerd and I figure I might as well give this a shot. I hope you enjoy this unbiased review. I am just trying to be honest with you guys as I would hope you all would be with me. I have the utmost respect for the authors I read and I give them all the props for putting their stories to paper. I have a lot of respect for that so I hope no one is offended by my honest reviews. That said...let's get this party started!!!
Let me start with my spoiler free review portion for those of you that have not read the book. Below, I will get to the parts that will give things away so we can discuss the book if you like, but I will warn you when to stop reading so I don't ruin anything for you.
AMAZON BOOK DESCRIPTION
Nothing Left to Lose is a sexy New Adult romance dealing with love, lust, loss and grief. First uploaded on Wattpad, it surpassed 25 million reads before publication.
Annabelle Spencer’s life is every girl’s dream. She has wonderful parents, great friends, and of course the perfect boyfriend, Jack Roberts. That all changes on her sixteenth birthday when her life comes crashing down around her. Her dream night turns into a nightmare when Jack is murdered right in front of her, and she’s kidnapped by his murderer, Carter Thomas, a big time drug and arms dealer.
After ten months of being with Carter, she’s found, but the experience has totally changed her. She’s no longer the happy-go-lucky girl that everyone used to know and love; she’s now cold, hard and suffers from night terrors. It appears that Carter broke not only her body, but her spirit too. A shadow of her former self, her slogan for life is now: ‘If you don’t care about anything, then you have nothing to lose’.
Carter is currently serving time for the murder of Jack, a conviction that Anna helped secure. But his retrial is coming up because some key evidence appears to have been tampered with. Unbeknown to Anna, death threats are being received by her father, the Senator. It appears that Carter is still interested in Anna and will stop at nothing to get her back.
Ashton Taylor is brought in to protect her. He’s a newly qualified SWAT agent, a bright spark, the agency’s new golden boy. He is assigned undercover, posing as her boyfriend. His job is to help her through college and keep her safe until the end of the trial in eight months’ time.
For three years she has been the broken, damaged girl, refusing to feel emotion or pain, but can Ashton help her rebuild her life and finally deal with the grief of losing her childhood sweetheart? Will he be the one to make her see that life is, in fact, worth living and that not all men will hurt her?
All the while, the shadow of the trial looms over the both of them, taunting them, reminding them that it isn’t over yet. After all, Carter Thomas will stop at nothing to be reunited with his ‘Princess’.
SPOILER FREE REVIEW PORTION
Solid storyline right? It was, but wanting to see how the story ended was what really forced me to finish this book. I wanted to give it up a few times, but always ended up coming back to finish it, and I skimmed a fair amount when it was just added fluff that made no impact to the story. That is why I've given it 3 stars. It wasn't that it was terribly written, it was just that some of it was just too unbelievable. I'm all for some fantasy in a book and it isn't like it has to be solidly realistic for me to like it, but I like to think that there is a chance. In my spoiler review portion, I will go into more depth as to why I didn't think it was realistic.
The second thing I didn't like was that it toooook fooooooorrrreeevvveeerrr to just get to the point. This book dragged. I mean, seriously dragged. Again, more detail in the spoiler review below. There was a lot of fluff in this book. I hate a book that goes without enough detail and I hate a book that has too much unnecessary detail as well. I am a working mother. I want enough detail to get a full picture in my imagination, but not too much that I'm wasting my time.
Finally, it is apparent this was written by someone in the UK. I have no problem with that but they author should have done a bit more research on the way things work here. There's no way Ashton would have been assigned to this girl, its a secret service job, not SWAT. Plus he's too young and inexperienced. He's had ZERO experience and they put her on a major political figure's daughter? Not likely. I also would have liked to know more about what security items Ashton was dealing with. Any time we were in his head, it was more about Anna then about what he's dealing with to protect her. Knowing his struggles would have helped build the suspense for the battle we know has to come. There were some other items that were not too consistent with the US but to be honest, I just didn't care enough to note it.
Now what I liked. I like that this is a stand alone novel. We are getting into a world of too many trilogies when a trilogy isn't needed. I enjoy a good series, don't get me wrong, but I don't like to wait forever to read the next book. I read so much that I do forget the details and then have to re-read to remember what I am reading with a new book release in the series. Not the end of the world, but hey, it's nice just reading a book and knowing I won't be left hanging at the end.
This is a good love story. Did I find a book boyfriend here? No, I didn't. I'll go into more detail below. Happy reading!
THIS SECTION MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS. DON'T BE MAD AT ME IF YOU READ IT AND RUIN IT FOR YOURSELF!!
Here is why it felt like fantasy to me. We have here a hot as hell young man coming out of SWAT best in his class and then he immediately turns into this pansy for this girl. I know there is love at first sight, but this doesn't even touch that. He starts calling her "Baby Girl" within moments of meeting this girl for the first time that has been through hell and been through tons of guards. Umm, no. We are talking about some egotistical guy that is a badass, and he falls at this girls feet immediately? Not likely. He just didn't man up the way I would have liked to see. As a result, he didn't make my ebook boyfriend list.
Ok...big spoiler here so don't read this if you don't want to. Why in the hell did it take so long for the damn point to get to the story, which is protecting her from Carter. It was the very end of the book and was maybe just 5% of the story where 95% is just protecting her from the thought of him. I needed more action and I needed to get to the point a lot faster. I would have liked to see Carter's return in the book a lot sooner instead of all the just pointless stories about Ashton and Annabelle and more time of her with Carter for Ashton to come swoop in as the hero. I was honestly hoping for something bad to happen to her during this book so we could get to something less gag inducing then waiting for her to like Ashton and then reject him again and again, and for him to have no backbone and be fine with it all.
So is he EBOOK BOYFRIEND MATERIAL???? That is the question right? No. He failed miserably. He needs to man up, take charge in the bedroom more, and quit being such a pushover.
