Review Hold Me If You Can by Stephanie Rowe
It’s unfortunate for Natalie that Nigel Aquarian is so compelling. With his inner demons, his unbridled heat, and his “I will conquer you” looks, he calls to her in exactly the way that nearly killed her.
BUT LOSING CONTROL MEANS LOSING HER LIFE…
That he’s an immortal warrior and that her powers rise from intense passions would seem to make them a match made in heaven, but unless they embrace their greatest fears, they’ll play out their final match in hell.
If you’re a fan of the series, you’ll love Hold Me if You Can. You get more of Mari’s particular brand of crazy and undecided, and you will end up going back and forth between like and absolute hatred for Mari. She’s the quintessential Hitler character for me. She’s evil but she doesn’t think she is, she can justify every single thing she has ever done and she is perfectly satisfied by doing it.
Natalie and Nigel are determined to get out of the Den and away from Mari’s influence. The one thing Ms. Rowe does absolutely right is the desperation she manages to infuse in the story, the desperation they feel to get away from the torturous emotions and sense of betrayal they felt from Mari.
In all honesty I never completely warmed to Natalie’s character and the constant forward and back, the small progress than great recession of their romance just made the book difficult to continue to read. I wanted to see them have great tension and have drama, but after a certain point you just want them to end up happy together and done with all of the bull, and throughout the novel whenever it seemed they were just about to get there something pulled them back, something stopped them from being able to go forward and after awhile i just stopped caring about their romance.
Ms. Rowe is amazingly inventive. Its the one thing I can always count on with her novels, something in them is going to completely amaze and astound me and I’m going to be left speechleess. In this case it was the fact that men were part metal. Then there was all of the other paranormal stuff thrown in; genies and magic and all sorts of creatures that were used in unique ways but also in ways that make sense given the novel and its characters.
Quite frankly if I’d been able to like Natalie and Nigel this might have been a great book. However I just couldn’t warm up to Natalie at all and Nigel was at best a fleeting consideration for me in the novel. Then given all of the turmoil in their relationship the ending was so quick and easy that it negated all of the emotional drama, all of the time you had invested in them and all of the turmoil because by the end you were just sitting there wondering what the hell just happened.
I just could not for the life of me get into this novel. I just couldn’t see it and thats what made this so hard to read.
Overall Rating: C+
