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.

⭐⭐⭐ /⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Untouchable by Sam Mariano

TRIGGER WARNING!!!

This review will contain spoilers!!

Carter is the quarterback of his high school team in Texas where football is a required religion. He also happens to be rich and good looking (of course) but as if that isn’t enough he is also a complete sociopath. A narcissist that manipulates everyone around him like pieces on a chess board. He gets off on power and control and no one in the whole town will take an ounce of it away from him.

Zoey is a bit of a loner, smart and confident. She has a long term goal in mind and will stop at nothing to achieve it. She wants out of Texas and out of small town life and knows that college paves her way. She also knows that unwanted attention needs to be reported. When another football player begins to harass her, she stands up for herself. This triggers the wrath of Carter.

It’s at this point that a very run of the mill YA story goes off the rails for me. This isn’t a genre I generally enjoy but I heard such glowing reviews from friends that I gave it a try. I ended up reading it in a desperate attempt to find some redeeming value in either character and failed.

Zoey comes off very strong and independent in the beginning. She is level headed and logical. She sees to know her worth and willing to sacrifice for it. I could understand her and her motivations. After Carter, that understanding becomes anger. She becomes his sexual toy and doormat. I wanted to strangle her so many times!

Carter never changes. He doesn’t mature. He doesn’t suddenly have an epiphany about his treatment of Zoey might affect her. He is a man-child and has no reason whatsoever to grow up. Zoey, of course, sees nothing wrong with this. She is convinced that he is either fixable or that whatever he does to her, she really wanted it anyway. Give me a break!

The author warns any potential reader in a very up front fashion that this is a bully romance. She goes further and mentions that it gets pretty dark and even includes trigger warnings. I read it anyway, thinking that I knew what to expect. I didn’t.

Carter doesn’t intimidate her before finally growing up and realizing that he’s been a huge ass. No, he sexually assaults her as his introduction to the book. He doesn’t do it quietly, or allow her to go on with her life. No, he does it in front of witnesses and threatens her. Does she run to report this violent assault? No, she starts dating him!

I don’t kinkshame. I am absolutely aware that rape fantasies exist. As long as what happens is between two consenting adults, it’s all good. I also know that in the BDSM lifestyle that sometimes the act is made better by forcing coercion but the submissive always has a safe word, a way out when things go too far. This book didn’t have those safeguards in place.

This read like a court document written by a very young adult that was trying to justify in her own mind why she didn’t report him to the authorities right away. This is how domestic violence starts. This is how abusers groom their victims in the beginning. The abuse and torment doesn’t begin and end with her. He threatens her friends, steals from one of them, and tells people that she’s pregnant to ensure that no one else will touch her and she will be socially isolated and thus a better target.

Don’t get me wrong. It wasn’t terribly written with typos and bad sentence structure. I only saw a couple of easily overlooked typos. The author can clearly write but this book is only for an older audience. I wouldn’t want a younger person to read this and think that this is typical of an intimate relationship.

I’ve struggled with my rating. I want to be fair and honest. My first inclination was, if I’m being honest, was to give it one star. However, I never write a review just after finishing a book. I mull, sometimes for several days. I make so many notes and I take everything into consideration. I do it with every book, this one included. In the end, I finally settled on a number.

Normally, I consider a three a neutral rating. I hate that! In this instance, it’s deserved. The book is well written from a technical standpoint but the characters are so flawed that they teeter on the verge of being bad enough to cause me to DNF. I muddled through but only because I was hoping for a really good ending. That was lacking, in my opinion.

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