Burn Down the Night by M. O’Keefe (Everything I Left Unsaid #3)
Released: August 9, 2016
Dark Romantic Suspense/Contemporary
Loveswept
Reviewed by Mandi
Painful. Intense. Emotional. This book made me hurt. It made me hurt and hurt and then the author went deeper and ripped out my heart even more. If you have read the first two books in this series (don’t worry, this can be read as a stand alone) you know of Joan and Max. And then you hear these two are somehow going to fall in love in this book, and you think, huh? How in the world is that going to happen? At the end of The Truth About Him, Joan drags a very injured Max into her car and races away. Their journey has just begun. Joan has been trying to find a way to save her sister for years. Joan and her sister Jennifer fell on very hard times and accidentally ended up in a cult – the kind where the leader is a lunatic and has a dozen wives. This lunatic also is a big drug dealer – and Max has been moving his product for him.
Joan escapes one night, but Lagan, the lunatic leader, is able to keep Jennifer, and basically threatens her life if Joan is ever seen again. Joan is swamped with guilt, and tracks Lagan’s drug dealings to a strip club where Max’s motorcycle gang has set up shop. After a series of events where Max’s club turns on him, Lagan flees, Max is shot and beat up, and Joan, knowing that Max is her only connection to Lagan, drags him into her car, and she heads south to Florida where her aunt lives. A former combat nurse, her aunt can patch up Max….and Joan can force him to tell her how to contact Lagan, and eventually save her sister.
But Max is stubborn. Max has lived a very hard life – and done some very bad things. He wants out of the club life- but reason after reason he finds himself back with Lagan and his crooked motorcycle club. He has lived for months waiting for a bullet in the head, so when it comes, he isn’t shocked. What surprises him is to wake up handcuffed to a bed in a condo in Florida. And for Joan to be his caretaker. Max is pissed. He wants out of the handcuffs and he wants revenge on his club and all those that turned on him. But Joan needs him to help save her sister.
There are many, many other factors that come into play but it’s too much to get into. They both have very messy pasts that the author very patiently introduces to the reader. They both have very complicated relationships with their family – Max and his brother Dylan, and Joan and her aunt Fern. It’s intriguing, and painful and I love that the author gives you all of this back story which richly enhances this story.
This book almost entirely takes place in a condo in Florida – and yet I could not stop turning the pages. For a long time, Max is handcuffed to a bed – and I could not stop turning the pages. The author gives you such raw and emotional conversation, it’s completely captivating. Max had seen Joan months before all of this went down, when she was a stripper at his club. He had an instant reaction to her, so she isn’t a stranger when he finds himself locked up in a bedroom with her.
“You. That night at the club. Watching me. Remember?”
He sucked in a breath. My skin was so hot under his gaze, I could barely stand it. “Oh, I fucking remember.”
He jerked his head back, his cheeks flushed, and fuck if I wasn’t into it again. This guy, this fucking guy. It was a chemistry thing between us, something animal and base. Unreasonable.
“That night, I left the stage and I thought you’d come find me. I was waiting for you to come find me. But you didn’t.”
He shook his head. All tight and restrained. Controlled. Oh God, I loved that. I wanted to pull at those restraints. I wanted to unravel them, one by one, and see what would happen.
These two are both so broken and damaged, the tension between them became so thick. Max and Joan have both made bad choices in life. They both feel like they don’t deserve any happiness in their lives. Max will do anything to get out of the handcuffs and get revenge on his so-called friends in his club. Joan will do anything to keep Max chained up until he agrees to help save her sister. Because they are both so brutally intent on their course of action, they hate each other. Neither is willing to give up anything, and so they come to a standstill. And simmering beneath this hatred and this pain, is explosive chemistry.
“Suck my dick and I’ll call him.”
“You’re lying.”
I was. I was lying.
“Fine, suck my dick because you want to. Suck my dick and I’ll make you come so hard you black out and for a minute, one goddamn minute, we’ll pretend we don’t live like this. We’ll pretend that we’re normal. That we’re decent fucking humans and not the pieces of shit we are.”
The torment made me ache. They both try so hard to be in control of each other, and because their future is unraveling and they have nothing to hold on to they are desperate for this control. So they pick and torment and rage at each other. But then things start to change. They open up about their past. They start telling small truths to one another. They take a moment and see just a teeny tiny glimmer of what their lives could be together in the future. But there is so much weighing them down in the present, it’s almost impossible to keep that glimmer of hope alive. Their fear of actually admitting their feelings and realizing they care about someone, and the fear of losing that someone, is intense.
He pulled me right up against him, so his breath was on my mouth. A kiss I couldn’t have.
“But I want you to tell me it hurts,” he said. “Stop playing this hard as ice game of yours and tell me that it hurts to push me away. Tell me that this thing between us matters to you.”
We stood there looking at each other and I couldn’t hide my shock. I was slack jawed and limp in his grip.
Of course it fucking hurt. It felt like ripping off my skin to watch him leave. I’d never had anyone like him in my life. Not ever. And maybe I never would again.
And the grief of that would put me on my knees if I said the words.
But somehow they do – and eventually Max gets unchained, and things happen and more things happen and my heart broke and then it smiled so hard. Molly O’Keefe writes the hell out of this book. She takes two flawed and broken people and just lays it out. No barriers, no skirting around issues. She just lays them in front of us in all of their pain and makes us take it . And I loved every single word of it. Easily the best book I’ve read this year.
Grade: A
P.S – As I mentioned, this book can be read as a stand alone, but I also highly recommend the first two books in this series. Everything I Left Unsaid and the sequel, The Truth About Him. The HEA for the Dylan (Max’s brother) and Annie comes in the second book.
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