No One Crosses the Wolf by Lisa Nikolidakis

This is a memoir about a troubled childhood full of abuse and neglect. It’s not an easy read and I wasn’t looking for one. It follows her growing up years with her brother and parents and all the trauma you can imagine.

Her father is a piece of crap, to put it lightly. He is an alcoholic that spends most of his at-home hours terrorizing his family. When he isn’t home, they dread his coming home so they are never truly free of him. After reading her recollections of him, I can understand that fear.

And her mother isn’t much better in comparison. She doesn’t abuse the kids but she doesn’t stop the abuse either. She puts her head in the clouds and pretends that everything is just fine. Domestic violence doesn’t go away because you want it to, you have to stop it! Her mother failed them all.

When her father finally snaps, I expected more somehow. More untangling the emotional threads of her life. More in-depth onion peeling. I wanted to see her do the hard work to undo all the lessons that her upbringing taught at such high prices. But she did none of it. She drank, slept around, and went to Greece. I’m healed!!! The end. What?? Yeah, I’m confused too.

My first inclination was to give this a 2-star review. I mulled it over though, for several days I might add. Three is as high as I can go. She writes well. She knows how to create an atmosphere and add texture and shade to a story but in the end, there’s no story. There’s no healing final chapter. There’s no Oprah “Aha!” moment. And that is a true letdown.

⭐⭐⭐ /⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Cain by Lane Hart

Cain is a young kid that has no other choice than to accept the reality in front of him. He’s 15 and being sheltered by the Mob. They’re grooming him to be a fighter once he’s older and he goes along with that because he has a secret past that haunts him. He has no reason to fight for a better future, until she walks in the door.

Gabby and her brother Robbie are runaways, looking for better than they left but struggling to find a foothold. Robbie makes a decision that affects them both but in ways they couldn’t imagine. For Gabby, it’s the start of a whole new life but for Robbie it’s something else altogether.

Cain shields Gabby from the horror of their life as they age and falls more in love with her everyday. She has always loved him but can’t get him to see her as anything but his kid sister. What will it take to prove to him that she’s grown and all his?

To be honest, if I had known the ages of the mains I would’ve skipped it. They start out as very young teenagers and it wraps up as they’re entering their late teens. They deal with adult situations but they’re still very young. Reading about sex between kids isn’t something I’m fond of doing. Sex isn’t foremost on the page though. There is a lot of sleeping together sans sex and heavy petting leading eventually to penetration. It’s realistic and sweet. I just wish they were older.

Robbie isn’t what Gabby thinks and she struggles to maintain a relationship with him. All she knows is that Cain doesn’t like him but doesn’t understand the animosity. It makes for some drama that they book didn’t really need. There is also Ivan and Knox. They too are fighters and play a large part of the story. They all live together and look out for each other, guarding the secrets of their pasts and loving each other. They are the perfect balance to the story.

The storyline is good though. There is the tension between the two mains, her brother, the MMA aspect, the mob, the roommates and their secrets. It’s well written and kept me entertained for a few hours. I want to know more about Ivan and Knox but I don’t know if I care enough to read about teenagers again.

Can I recommend this book? Yes, it’s a solid 3 egg book. There weren’t any annoying name changes or language butchery and it passed the time easily enough. If I hadn’t felt like a total pervert it might have been 4.

First Instinct by Suzie O’Connell

☡☡ Content Warning ☡☡

The author does an admirable job of warning any potential reader upfront that this story deals with a sensitive subject matter. The heroine is date raped and must deal with the aftermath of that act. This is something that happens all too frequently everywhere but has been largely been ignored on college campuses until recent years. We are finally breaking the silence and books like these further that cause.

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Nick and Beth have been best friends and neighbors their whole lives. They are now enrolled in college and live in the same residence hall, on different floors. They are as close as ever and making the most of college life, including relationships with others. Will the hateful act of another brings them closer after ending life as they know it? Does that mean they can never go forward or will they embrace the new reality and each other?

My personal taste found this book a little heavy on the syrup. It was sweet and obviously geared toward younger audiences. I can imagine this would be the type of book that teenagers would love. However, I was looking for something very different and I found it. I can’t say that I would make it a habit to read this type of book all the time but it was nice enough to break the monotony.

If you read this book expecting flaming panties, look elsewhere. The only sex in this book isn’t pretty. Check the content warning. This definitely isn’t erotica. It’s just a sweet coming of age book. While this book didn’t fall into Christian literature, it bordered it in some ways. Beth was waiting for marriage to have sex but Nick was already sexual active. 

It tended to be a bit wordy too but even that wasn’t aggravating. I think it could have been a novella and been a bit tighter. I also had an issue with the speed at which Beth started thinking about Nick differently. It was only a few days and she’s getting hot thinking about him? That pulled me out of the story and quite frankly, I almost quit reading it.

I hung in there though and the ending is the HEA that everyone expects. It’s right for the book and the couple. I wouldn’t change a word of it. This book is part of a series and I might try another one someday soon. 

Can I recommend this book? Yes. The author took something incredibly hard and incorporated it well. She gets points for that. She also gets points for making Beth strong in the end. It would have been 5 eggs but for Beth rushing to have feelings for Nick so soon after a traumatic event. 

(Three and half eggs rounded up, as always, to four.)

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