Why…why am I less than enthralled with this book, which took me over a week to read! Yes, seriously. So many of my goodreads friends LOVED this book and yet for me it dragged on a bit in places and repeated a few times. The Killer was that I so loved Mac and I totally felt his pain.Losing your spouse is one thing, but losing your soul mate and your whole life in one fell swoop is quite another. Mac picked up and left everything and everyone when his wife was killed. His only solace had been channelling all his rage into the cage.Seven years ago, Gayle lost her family and her boyfriend. Here was my status update and I do believe it captures my frustration…“So let me get this straight…you wandered for 5 years lost and alone and discovered life in random sex…but Mac is supposed to just snap out of it after 4 years??? Seriously!?!?!?”Random hookups with no attachment and no love, that is how to survive pain? I have had review readers critique my comments in the past for a review about mourning and loss and that perhaps I know not of what I speak…well you would be very wrong. But, I am a huge advocate of therapy and I do firmly believe that even a moment of love, peace and connection are gifts to behold, not to covet! So on this point alone, I was ticked off at Gayle. If she had just wanted random hook ups for the sake of having fun, then I would have been great with that…own your sexuality. But she wasn’t doing that, she was hiding herself and burying her feelings…sex was her drug of choice, while fighting was Mac’s.While I was happy to see these two get their peace and HEA, I was not attached to either of them…and that for me makes a book okay. Others may connect with two and love it (as 6 of my GR friends did)…so if broken, sexy tornado chasers are your thing…have at it! Enjoy!Here is something funny…I reviewed this book 2X and they are similar yet different…So, here is my first review!Karia rants…Gayle is a free spirit…yes. But she is also a pushy, myopic, shallow hoe…ya, I said it…You are a hoe…how do you know, cause I told you so! She seeks to soothe her pain, anger and loss in the temporary arms of whatever piece of man candy she can find. The big caveat: no relationship/love/or attachment on her side (to me that is the very definition…I am not saying you can’t be with men or many, many, many men…just love something about them. If you are sharing your body with them, then I do believe you should want something of them. The very mixing of the soul). Gayle mourned and lost herself for 5 years and had her come to Jesus moment when she realized she can just live with gusto. The past two years have been spent telling everyone and anyone what she really thinks, doing as she pleases, wearing whatever she feels like and most of all, having sex with any man, any time and for any reason just because it gives her pleasure. So the take home message of how to deal with trauma…become a hedonist!And then there is Mac…Mac seeks to soothe his pain by inflicting it upon others. When he lost everything…he left everything and everyone behind and moved thousands of miles away and began fighting seriously…and became “The Snake”. His cold, calculated, rage was his calling card and sadly, it has also become his persona. While I did want Mac to come back to himself and stop suppressing who and what he really was inside…I was super pissed at Gayle for most of the middle of the book. She has had 7 years to “recover” and Jake has had 4…who says 4 years is enough mourning? Who says when is long enough and when it is time to move forward? Both of these two needed some intensive group therapy…mourning is long processes…that can take months, to years, to decades… A lot of sentiments run through this story. Lots of tense moments, harrowing escapes and many past ghosts for both Mac and Gayle. The attraction between them is fought and denied by both characters with the antics and dialogue between Gayle and Mac hilarious in many paragraphs! The torment that both characters go through throughout the book is gut wrenching. An emotional, tense, animated read.*ARC Received from the Publisher for an honest review
What do You think about Winning Love (2014)?
Hmmm...gonna have to think on this review...
—pkw_stokrotka
