Review: Forever Ago by J. Rose

Forever Ago by J. Rose

Publication date: May 26th, 2021

Pages: 336

Spice: 🌶️🌶️🌶️

Synopsis:

Pick up this dark romance standalone novel, packed full of soul-destroying love, sizzling tension and guaranteed to break your heart one page at a time!

HALLIE

I'm alone in the sea of my grief until I meet Zeke, a tornado of complications who leaves destruction in his wake. I fall hard and fast, despite all the warning signs.

Our love story is far from a fairy-tale. But if it hurts, then it's real.

There's a monster hiding beneath his tattooed skin, an addiction that will tear us apart. I can't lose him, but I'm powerless to fix wounds that simply run too deep.

How do you save someone who doesn't want to be saved?

ZEKE

I've been a shadow of my former self ever since the crash, consumed by guilt. A chance encounter in bereavement therapy changes everything.

Hallie invades my life with her soft smiles and fiery passion. She becomes my whole world and for the first time in so long, I have a reason to live.

My demons aren't so easily beaten. I should walk away, yet I can't bring myself to leave the woman who took my broken pieces and brought me back to life, one kiss at a time.

I'll fight this addiction to my very last breath for her, but the road to recovery is never simple. If I'm not careful, I might just drag her to hell with me.

AUTHOR'S NOTE:

Forever Ago is a dark, standalone college M/F romance. Full trigger warning is available inside the book.

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Review:

Hallie doesn't know how to cope after the loss of her father to cancer and her mother and unborn brother ten years prior to that in a car accident. She has been going through the motions and never fully embracing that she was still alive even while they were gone. It was when she sought out bereavement counseling that she met the man who seemed just as wounded and lost as she was. Ezekiel blows into her meeting and snickers at all the sad saps who actually get anything out of the times they share together. At first Hallie thinks the smug man beside her couldn't possibly be in as much as pain as the rest of them but one look in his green eyes changed her mind. Zeke and Hallie were then on a whirlwind rollercoaster of grief, loss, and addiction that threatened to consume them entirely every step of the way. Zeke is ready to let the drugs consume him entirely as penance for causing the crash that took his younger brother's life. But with Hallie as his guiding light and the star in the sky to follow can he find his way through? And will Hallie learn that she is not as alone in this world as she once thought she was?

What did you do to me, J. Rose?! I had this sinking feeling in my stomach all the way through the book as I watched the back and forth between Hallie wanting to save Zeke and him throwing in the towel over and over to try to run back to familiar habits. I knew when I reached 56% and things seemed to be perfect that something was going to happen and nothing prepared me for the sobfest that I engaged in. Hallie was such a wonderful character that just wanted to do right by her man and Zeke desperately wanted to wrangle his demons for her. I loved watching how deeply they fell but Zeke pissed me off every chance he got. It was written really realistically. That cowardice whenever things got touch. The self-blame when anything went wrong. The desperation to hold onto sobriety even though you may not fully be ready for it yet. I was rooting for the couple. 

This book was absolutely heart-wrenching but it conveyed such a powerful message. The way to know if an experience was real is if it hurts. That pain means that for a moment you loved and were loved. Mourning the loss of love is healthy but after a while you have to try to keep moving forward despite it. The loss never leaves you. There are times when I think about my best friend who died and it aches deep within my soul. But I get up every single day and keep going because he would berate me silly if I didn't. 

I loved this book from start to finish. I felt things the author portrayed deeply and the only advice I have when you inevitable read this, readers, is to keep a tissue box near.