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Surge by Maya Nicole
Series: Salinity Cove #1
Publication date: August 12th, 2020
Pages: 320
Spice: 🌶️
Synopsis:
My life changed forever the day my father's oil rig crashed into the ocean. Now, three men want answers I don't have, and they'll do whatever it takes to get them.
Jax, Morgan, and Blake want to destroy me, but I know their secret. I'm questioning everything I knew to be true. Especially when the truth about them leads to discovering a deep, long-hidden secret about myself.
They aren't who they appear to be... but neither am I.
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Review:
Riley already felt shame over what her father had done, but it seemed that she was going to suffer the sins of the father as far as three incredibly handsome classmates were concerned. Her father, who caused a great oil spill to occur in the ocean then promptly disappeared has left Riley to hold the bag on what he had done. And the boys who are after her for information on a man she never knew her entire life are in for disappointment. But along the way, as she tries to thwart their attempts to garner information she doesn't have by any means necessary, she starts to realize her attraction for each of them. From the brooding Jax, to the bad boy Morgan, all the way to the golden boy Blake, she finds herself inexplicably drawn to them. But could there be something more at hand here? Is there more to these strange boys and perhaps even herself?
I am no stranger to bully romances and this one was pretty mild by the genre's standards, however, I did feel bad for Riley. The abuse she was getting from circumstances were a lot worse than what the boys were doing to her to be fair. She just kept getting pelted with it. And at only seventeen she really should have never had to even consider trying to be self-reliant. But she did. Her parents were nowhere to be found and she was left to handle things on her own. She seemed to handle it well albeit with a few tears along the way.
I feel like there were a lot of points in the story where you would hold your breath because you could see something was going to happen and then it just... didn't. And I am not just talking about sex, although, yes, there was zero sex in the book, but also with drama. There was one instance that involved Riley's best friend, Aiden, that was just confusing. A blackmail attempt that seemed to go absolutely nowhere. What was even the point? Him being absent in Riley's life for that brief time didn't cause any major twists so it just felt like unnecessary filler. There were a few other instances of it that left the story a little shaky to the point of being hard to fully dive into.
I don't find a single one of the guys appealing. Even when there were occasions when they switched to the boys' perspective I still didn't understand them or their motives. It just felt rushed and the boys were not given the chance to be redeemable in my eye as far as bullies go. That is extremely important in these sorts of books. The reader needs to see hints of a heart below all the bullshit so they can commiserate with the antagonistic male leads and swoon over them. I never got that from any of them. Which really crippled my appreciation for the story overall.
This book felt like it straddled the line between YA and NA and didn't know which way to go. It would have been a perfect sell as a YA if some of the graphic language and sexual situations were downplayed more. The sex never happened so it could have been glossed over easily. I am hoping in the next book in the series I see it lean more one way or the other so I can figure out how to prepare myself while I read.
I feel that this book was shaky but I will give the series and the characters a second chance in the next installment.
