Make Me Forever (Make Me #1-8) by Beth Kery
Series: Make Me
Contemporary Romance
Released: May 24, 2016
Intermix
Reviewed by Sheena

This is a review of the entire serial Make Me, which includes eight installments.

Harper McFaddan has made her name as an investigative journalist by being both compassionate and fearless. After tragedy strikes her family, she moves to the shores of Lake Tahoe to find some peace. But when mysterious software mogul Jacob Latimer comes into her life, her thoughts turn from her own healing to an urgent need to get closer to him…
Jacob Latimer is the definition of a self-made man. The software entrepreneur built his corporation from nothing, but rumors abound about the shadiness of his rise to power  and no one knows what secrets lurk in his past. Harper is the last person he should let into his life. As an investigative journalist, she’s the one person who could expose his hidden origins. But Jacob knows things about Harper’s past that make him irresistibly drawn to her. He wants nothing more than to make her his -and Jacob is a man who always gets what he wants…

Favorite Quote: “I’m yours,” she whispered.  “And you’re mine.  Not in the ugly way, like your uncle thought he owned the dogs.  In a beautiful way…and you just just feel the bond, and you know it’s true. No one can change that, Jake.”

He couldn’t believe she was saying his thoughts out loud.   It was too incredible to believe.

Make Me was a brooding, dramatic romance.  Dark in nature, this eight part serial is the story of two souls who were joined in trauma and separated for over 20 years. Their paths collide and their history is unraveled each chapter at a time.  Harper’s parents perish in a freak train accident and she sets out to remake her life, relocating in a Lake Tahoe community, away from the grind of her former life as a respected reporter/journalist.  She runs into the mysterious Jacob Latimer, instantly drawn to him, she does not remember their shared history- but he does. And it is tearing him up inside.

Jacob is a brilliant man who overcame horrible abuse and neglect at the hands of his uncle, a vile man who dabbled in everything from vicious dog fighting rings to kidnapping young women and human trafficking.  He escaped his uncles clutched and created a lucrative and successful business.  The man who has everything, longs for the one thing he could never forget.  A young girl who his uncle kidnapped. A girl he bonded with twenty years ago as a young teen and worked up the courage to help rescue despite his paralyzing fear of his uncle.  Right away he realizes Harper is that young girl he knew so many years ago and he simply must have her.

Much of this story is steamy sexual tension, longing, guilt and the power of survival.  This is my first foray into a Beth Kery world, and I have a healthy appreciation for her craft.  Early on, I did not know what to expect from these characters.  There is this distance and barrier that prevented me from really connecting with either the hero or heroine.  However, I still found myself eerily invested in their story.  Harper carried herself with a quiet melancholy, until she discovered herself through her interactions with Jacob.  Quiet, but not a pushover, she stoop up for herself and had quite a spine.  Jacob was damn near glacial, intriguing.  You can see but not touch when it came to Jacob, his billionaire status adding another layer to his paranoid-hermit tendencies.

Incapable of staying away from one another, they embark on a sensual affair, just sex (snort, yeah right) and Jacob’s darker, bedroom predilections sing to something long hidden in Harper.   There is some bondage and light BDSM, nothing that should trigger more than usual- if being tied up gives you the skeeves, then maybe this is not for you, but the delicious tension is what really makes this series pop.  Despite my inability to really connect with Jacob and Harper, I read this series at a fast clip, always curious what layer would be unraveled next.  The story was larger than the characters and I was kind of okay with that.  Make Me as a series is no afternoon fluff.  Harper and Jacob have some serious issues to work through, on top of navigating their new couple status in their nosey little affluent town.  Aside from an unstable and recklessly troubled ex girlfriend, none of the supporting characters are particularly remarkable.

Make Me flashes back and forth to Harper and Jacob’s horror twenty years prior and present day.  The meat of the story includes the scenes where the teenage Jacob and Harper support one another.  Once free, Harper’s parents severed her ties to Jacob in a drastic way.  The consequences were more far-reaching than her parents expected and their family had rough road ahead.  Not understanding why the girl he bonded with, who gave him a reason to want to save not only her, but himself as well, Jacob wrote heart breaking letters to young Harper.  Letters that went unanswered, her silence affecting him in ways that took root and helped make him the stoic man she would meet twenty years later.  I took issue with Harper being in the dark about their shared past for as long as she was. I understood Jacob’s reasoning, however, the”I-know-what-you-did-last-summer-even-if-you-don’t” trope, does not usually play well with me.  The longer the party in the dark remains in the dark fashions distracting little wedges between the H/h.  I revel when the truth is unleashed!

Simple plot, not too over wrought, and it was quite the experience to read.  Thank goodness I was able to read the series in total, I can not imagine being on the hook as the serial was being written, there are some truly cliff hanger moments that I would have railed against.  I’d be remiss not to mention that while sexy and interestingly written, the ending blows it.  I had to confirm, check and double-check that this was in fact a completed series.  No way the story should have just, plunk! dropped off with a haphazard HEA. To have taken such care with the story arc, it is rather criminal to just drop kick the end.  Where is the fines I spent 7 serials getting absorbed within?  Gah!  Despite my misgivings when it comes to the end, the journey is good enough that I recommend it as a dark, sensual appealing read.

Grade: C

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