I just finished Nothing Left to Lose by Kirsty Moseley, and I feel like it took FOREVER. I found the premise interesting to start:
Annabelle Spencer's life
is every girl's dream. She has wonderful parents, great friends, and of
course the perfect boyfriend, Jack Roberts. That all changes on her
sixteenth birthday when her life comes crashing down around her. Her
dream night turns into a nightmare when Jack is murdered right in front
of her, and she’s kidnapped by his murderer, Carter Thomas, a big time
drug and arms dealer.
After ten months of being with Carter,
she’s found, but the experience has totally changed her. She’s no longer
the happy-go-lucky girl that everyone used to know and love; she’s now
cold, hard and suffers from night terrors. It appears that Carter broke
not only her body, but her spirit too. A shadow of her former self, her
slogan for life is now: ‘If you don’t care about anything, then you have
nothing to lose’.
Carter is currently serving time for the
murder of Jack, a conviction that Anna helped secure. But his retrial is
coming up because some key evidence appears to have been tampered with.
Unbeknown to Anna, death threats are being received by her father, the
Senator. It appears that Carter is still interested in Anna and will
stop at nothing to get her back.
Ashton Taylor is brought in to
protect her. He’s a newly qualified SWAT agent, a bright spark, the
agency’s new golden boy. He is assigned undercover, posing as her
boyfriend. His job is to help her through college and keep her safe
until the end of the trial in eight months’ time.
For three years
she has been the broken, damaged girl, refusing to feel emotion or
pain, but can Ashton help her rebuild her life and finally deal with the
grief of losing her childhood sweetheart? Will he be the one to make
her see that life is, in fact, worth living and that not all men will
hurt her?
All the while, the shadow of the trial looms over the
both of them, taunting them, reminding them that it isn’t over yet.
After all, Carter Thomas will stop at nothing to be reunited with his
‘Princess’.
I really enjoyed this book at first. It started out strong for me, despite some annoying bits and pieces. The story is set in the U.S., but the author used language and concepts that are distinctly English (where she is from.) There were some heavily overused words and phrases that got to be annoying after awhile. The main characters used these pet names for each other, Pretty Boy and Baby Girl. Again, I didn't mind them at first, but then they just seemed to be used too much. My biggest complaint about this book was hot FREAKING LONG it was. It was 525 pages on a Kindle. There was absolutely no need for this book to be this damn long! They could have cut out about 300 of those pages and still had a decent story. By the time the ending came along, I was so annoyed with the length of time it was taking me to read this book that I couldn't help but laugh at how unrealistic the story turned out. Without giving away any spoilers, let's just say that the author made this guy out to be like a freaking superhero.
I ended up giving this book 3 stars on Goodreads. It was okay, but I don't know that I would recommend it to anyone. If the author did some MAJOR editing and revising, I think it could have more potential.
Re: WIJFR: Nothing Left to Lose (NS)
I really liked the premise, but the execution was lacking.
Here were the 3 big killers for me.
**SPOILER WARNING**
1. Insta-love. There's not real love story development. Both characters are guilty of this, but Ashton's is just unforgivable. He sees her, and he's all in. Ridiculous.
2. Character inconsistency. Anna is so traumatized that she can't even hug her mother, but she has sex with Ashton after knowing him for 3 days. What?! Ashton has dedicated his life to becoming SWAT, but he puts his entire career at risk after knowing Anna for 5 minutes. Seriously?
3. Overacting. Too many eye rolls, wicked laughs, and bursts of laughter. Subtlety would have added much to this story.
My Badges:
My Badges: